Morning Sun Newlands Valley

The morning sun.
 Newlands Valley
Acrylic on Canvas
50x40cm

Langdale Evening Sun Painting by Rob Miller

Langdale Evening Sun revisited
Acrylic on Canvas
70x50cm

The track through the trees.. A painting by Rob Miller RSA



The track through the trees
70x50cm
Acrylic on canvas



There is something very pleasant about woodland and the sunlight filtering across a lush, warm English summer meadow. Off the beaten track  and across the lane from my friends home, this farm lane meanders across organic pasture land down to a small cottage aptly called Wellfield., its the kind of hazy summer Daisy  place that you dream about when stuck in the office in the middle of the city or the traffic on the M25 whilst the sun sparkles outside.... which makes doing my job sound alongside that of the droning bees and the distant wood pigdeon  pretty pleasant.

English Oak Lake District, Painting by Rob Miller RSA

Oak Tree & Causey Pike Newlands Valley

Oak tree and Causey Pike

Two images of an oak tree in meadowland near Keswick on a wet summers day.  Across the Newlands valley Causey Pike and Grisdale stand out in the background. I done some work  on the images digitally in photoshop so that I can get a different visual stimulus as I look into creating more than just a copy of the scene.

Langdale Valley 2 Paintings by Rob Miller RSA

Raw Head Farm  Langdales
Watercolour on paper



Langdale Pike
Acrylic on canvas

Two works that look to capture the special Langdale atmosphere..which when I stopped to think about my Langdale experiences is an eclectic mixture of every weather type that can be pushed into a small confined space...any photographic record also tends to be of the better hill days, cold blue skies and a frost lieing low giving rise to a crystal clarity of every detail on the fell. Most Langdale visual memory records are consumed quickly in a grey misted daylight except for a glint of water coursing along a stone path,  a flash of a silver disc that gives lie to the hope of sunshine to come...

Lake District drawings by Rob Miller RSA

Blackbeck Tarn
Conte on Paper A3

A green and silent spot, amid the hills,

A small and silent dell! O'er a stiller place

No singing sky-lark ever poised himself.

Coleridge  'fears in solitude' April 1978

More drawings and work can be seen on the Cumbria page.

Cartmel Cottages A Painting by Rob Miller RSA

Cartmel Cottages
Oil on Canvas
30cmx30cm

One of the more fascinating features of painting in and around the lake district massif is the geology  which gives rise to strikingly different flora and fauna which itself gives rise to its own colour range. The Limestone outcrops in the south Lakes ending at Humphrey Head are akin to being in both the South West Peninsular and the Yorkshire Dales rolled at the same time..A days walk through the quiet country lanes and fields can bring so many different landscape features. For me its still very much Lancashire.

Crook o Lune A painting by Rob Miller RSA

Crook O lune
Acrylic on canvas
50cmx50cm

More finishing touches to this work, trying to bring more depth and create a wider range of mid tones so that the water looks like polished glass, yet another footstep on the journey of understanding, which today for me seems to be more about dismantling those barriers, actual, temporal and mental that the painter puts between himself and the process of painting than about anything else, does a painting have to be done in one sitting? why can't I see the obvious? why do question marks not have a semi colan; I bought a book of Samuel Coleridge's poems yesterday in Bowness for £2.99, it was a proper book, hard backed and well printed, his solitude walks poems struck a chord in me, what price poetry;  yes it does, is the answer to the question on a painting in one sitting...because first impressions are the best, look at Constables sketches, Corot's energy in a sketch compared to his salon pieces, Coleridge the poet distills the essence of a poem through a creating process could be quick could take an age, look at  Leonard Cohens perfect poems and songs, each studied, word of meaning hangs on a sentance like a shard of glass or a Purcell note,  look at Jaccottet he writes an essay  almost a book and then over the passage of years distills it into one verse, for poets and painters I think  the saying less is more is only correct  if its said about something that's not about nothing; so go and repaint the canvas so its just enough, no more no less, the problem is more about the barriers presented by the medium than the narration of a poem of light.................

Whalley Nab, Ribble Valley A painting by Rob Miller RSA

Whalley Nab  with Pendle
50cmx50cm
Acrylic on canvas

Just had to have a tidy up and repaint of this  painting of Whalley Nab which has been out at the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal; this view is above Whalley looking down the steep brew and onwards across Whalley and Wistwell to a distant Pendle. It was a favourite place to visit for my mum who loved the Ribble Valley and Whalley.