Artist:Barry Toms, North Bradley, UK

Event On The Dunes

St Ives, Low Tide

Frosty Morning

One Of These Nights

Ancient Stones

Water Lilies

Mirrors In The Sand

Rock Chick

Two Nymphs

So Long, Thanks For All The Fish

Shrimps

Barry Toms

Born in London, but now living in Wiltshire, I am a largely self-taught artist (In my former life I was an Electrical Engineer.). I started painting watercolours then moved on to oils and acrylic and recently have been producing pastel portraits. While working at the Tyne shipyards, I painted watercolours of the Northumberland coast and exhibited at Newcastle and Wallsend. After moving to Bath, I took early retirement and studied life painting and portraiture at Bath college and exhibited at the Hotbath gallery in Wiltshire, I now concentrate mainly on portrait commissions but also produce various other work.
I paint landscapes, seascapes and interiors, usually with a figurative content. I try to capture a moment in time and invite the viewer to consider the frozen moment. The viewer is invited to explore the world of the painting and in a two way transaction, my visual and emotional responses to the subject will react with the viewers' perceptions and experiences and thus the spectator will form their own unique impressions and meanings.
The ideas and references for a painting originate from many forms; the memory of something seen, pictures cut out from magazines, my own photographs and sketches. I think very carefully about the subject for a painting and formulate my ideas in sketches and colour notes. Having worked out the form I wish the painting to take, the subject is rigorously drawn onto the canvas from my final sketch. I paint in a fairly traditional way, building up the layers of paint to give a depth of colour. Although painting in a representational way, I do not try to achieve 'realism', but hope that in a robust and painterly way, the work has a life of its own.

Barry Toms's Gallery