I’ve always been a painter, right back to my early teenage years. Paint is like an addiction; its tactile quality, the smell and the feel. Forty years later, I still feel obsessed. And painting has been good to me; a career that has sustained me. I enjoy interacting with people and it has also provided opportunities to travel.

As a landscape painter, I don’t set out to photographically record nature. My approach is to create a version of a nature that can be believable, as if was solely painted from natural surroundings. The subject is of less consequence than the simple act of applying paint; my paintings are rarely literal interpretations of a scene. Although my current work starts plein air, generally in a natural setting, the paintings will often evolve and include a composite of several locations; perhaps the foreground from one location and the background from another. In larger studio works, these locations can be hundreds of kilometres apart. I also enjoy the challenge of working with different mediums of paint and sometimes find it stimulating to combine mediums within a painting. Painting in watercolours demands a different, almost opposite technique to painting in oils. With watercolour, your lights are very precious and the opportunity for reworking washes is limited.

I approach painting so it is both stimulating and challenging. As long as the shapes, colours and tones within the picture plane harmonise, I feel energised. And my obsession can continue.

Herman Pekel