Darren is an architect and a teacher (of architecture) and a keen walker. He grew up in North Kent close to the shores of the Medway and the Thames, although he often feels the pull of the mountains of Wales and the Lakes, as well as the marshy lowlands and fields that formed his natural connection to landscape.

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Darren’s art is a way that he can escape the precise, thin-line detailed drawings of his profession and let go towards a more abstract and minimalist representation of the landscapes around us. His painting always starts with a walking visit to a place and a series of sketches, where he gets to know the landscape better. He then makes paintings, primarily from memory, which evoke the feelings, the colours and textures and the connection between land and sky. His paintings are the result of several layers of paint, so that forms and colours, put down earlier in the process, are able to find their way back to the surface as other layers are applied.

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Apart from an interest in art developed in his youth and in his training as an architect, Darren doesn’t have formal training, but he does attend life drawing and painting classes at Blackheath Conservatoire.