PUDDLES of colour

I enjoy painting water. And I don’t just mean small moorland streams or wide-flowing rivers. It might seem rather incongruous, but the humble puddle can be a wonderful thing. Quite often when walking and sketching the lanes near to my home in Devon, a once-unpromising subject can be completely transformed after a shower or prolonged spell of rain. Puddles form, unexpected reflections appear, and that unlikely subject suddenly seems to present a wealth of possibilities.

This was the case one autumn afternoon in Suffolk. I’d always felt that the bend in this lane had the bones of a painting in it. The problem was that the road was such a large part of the scene with