The Palomar at the former Finca San Miguel is an ornate
Modernista dovecote built at the site of a spring that for many years supplied
the city of Almeria with water. The palomar is about 1/3 scale of a full-size
building such that what surrounds it appears quite out of scale to it. 
It is at once a real place and one which appears unreal.

This is about 40kms from where I lived, down a long track
behind a sea of 'plasticos'. These balsas (reservoirs) supplied the water to
Almeria city and once upon a time someone decided that a highly ornate
Modernista dovecote / folly - for that is what this is; a palatial
dovecote/palomar - was just the thing. It is in fact only around 5 or 6 meters
tall, however it does look as if a huge apartment block has been transplanted
from the Eixample in Barcelona. The palomar is part of part of a grand old
finca, now a ramshackle riding school. To gain access I asked the stable lad (a
huge heavy set fellow with the loudest leaf blower I've ever heard which he was
using to muck out the horses i.e. blowing dry horse shit into voluminous
clouds)… if I could take some photos of it and his reply was; 'good luck trying
to get down there mate, and be careful of the electrified fences - they're for
horses and will knock you over proper, like'. Re-tracing my steps down the
hill, over the enormous wrought iron gate hidden behind weeds, dodging then
befriending the inevitable dog, warily following the contour for a few hundred
meters I finally arrived at the far end of the balsa and as I did so a Great
Egret took off. I then waited half an hour until the sun went behind the ridge
behind the folly so I could get a few shots, make sketches and take notes.

To discover the sorts of places that form the basis of my
paintings I do a lot of walking and driving about, following one's nose and by
not being shy - and in the south eastern part of Spain there are a lot of
grumpy hunter/Vox types that carry shotguns, there are also a lot migrant
workers looking for a roof over their head, and many tempting looking ruined or
semi ruined buildings some of which are occupied by those workers. From
experience I very much look like a potential problem to both groups unless and
until I can explain the reason for my presence.

However, my landscape paintings exist within the long tradition of the
painted image being compositions from my source sketches, ideas and photo
reference and never simply a representation or transcription of a single scene. As always happens throughout the whole process of making a painting; from
the initial glimpse of an idea, composing, drafting up, painting until the last
stroke of the brush a lifetime's worth of imagery, influences and learning come
into play sometimes consciously but more often unconsciously. Here, at various
times I was thinking about, amongst others Rene Magritte, Bernardo Bellotto,
Fernand Khnopff, John Constable, Corot and Cozens.

Andalucia, so the erroneous etymology has it, is ‘The Land of Light’ and
despite having spent much time there I am to a certain extent a temperamentally
northern painter in a similar sense to that described by Jonathan Meades - as
being within a ‘School of Saenredam’. Pieter
Janszoon Saenredam made paintings of church interiors where, as Meades says:

‘Nothing happens in a most emphatic way … they persuade the viewer to
wonder what is not being show. They imply a metaphysical mystery in places
pregnant with possibility where something may or may not be about to happen.’