TO Peter Watson, a rolling field up on the Yorkshire Wolds is like a blank canvas, the farmer who works it an unwitting artist.

Peter loves the ever-changing shapes and patterns that farmers create when they plough and harvest. They produce, he says,"landscapes of vivid and vibrant colours such as rape, poppies and linseed, but also subtle variations of ochres and earth colours."

We all notice these shapes and colours when we're out walking, or even for a drive. But it takes an artist like Peter to capture this common experience, and transfer it onto canvas.

A new exhibition of the 69-year-old's work opens at the Triton Gallery in Sledmere on July 21. It features 20 or so new original landscapes - painted in oil on canvas - in which he gives his own unique take on the landscapes of the wolds and of the Yorkshire coast, moors and forests.

His painting of Flixton Wold is a perfect example of the field as artwork. It captures the rolling curve of the landscape, the wavy pattern of furrows left by the plough, the weight and density and earthiness of the ploughed field itself.

York Press:

Flixton Wold, oil on canvas by Peter Watson

The light is vivid, with almost a Hockney quality to it; the field patterns slightly stylized but no less real for that.

He trained as a graphic designer long ago, Peter admits, explaining that effect. And now, when he paints, he builds up the oil in layers of colour that give his work that unique appearance. These are paintings so physical you want to reach out and touch them.

Another of his passions is the Yorkshire coast, he says - and the way the power of the sea is constantly changing and eroding it.

Born in Beverley, and trained at the Hull and Liverpool colleges of art, he now, after a lifetime of teaching and painting, lives near Scarborough. Many of his landscapes feature the wild North Yorkshire coast. But in many ways he's drawn to the more humdrum coastline south of Bridlington, he admits. The coastal cliffs there are so soft they are being constantly worn away by the sea.

"There are some old pillboxes that were once part of our coastal defences," he says. "Because of the way the cliffs are eroding, sometimes the sea gets around the back of the concrete, leaving the pill boxes stranded on the beach. They become part of the coastline - almost a part of the natural defences against the sea."

His wonderful painting of Fraisthorpe Beach shows exactly that: soft slabs of cliff-stone worn out of the rock face by the sea, and jumbled amongst them the remains of an old pillbox, now itself being worn away by the action of time and water.

York Press:

Fraisthorpe Beach, oil on canvas by Peter Watson

In addition to his more recent Yorkshire landscapes, Peter's new exhibition at Sledmere also features some of his older depictions of the industrial landscapes of south Yorkshire.

His wife, Rita, is from Rotherham, he says. "When we first met we used to go down there." To a lad from Beverley, the industrial landscapes he saw there were something very different, and very dramatic. His older works (included in the exhibition as 'canvas prints', ie photographs reproduced on canvas, rather than as oil originals) capture the strange beauty as well as the industrial grime and power of those landscapes. It's as though you are seeing them anew through the eyes of that young man from East Yorkshire, the familiar made fresh through the power of art.

York Press:

Tinsley Viaduct, canvas print by Peter Watson

  • East Yorkshire landscapes and beyond, an exhibition of work by Peter Watson, runs at Sledmere's Triton Gallery from Tuesday July 21 until Sunday August 2. The gallery is housed in a building opposite the entrance to Sledmere House.

Peter will be sharing exhibition space with textile artist Angela Morris, who will be showing fabric designs influenced by her time in West Africa and Kenya.

Peter's work will also be on show at the Staithes Festival of Arts and heritage on Saturday September 12 and Sunday September 13.