I FIRST WENT TO THE BASINGSTOKE CANAL at Odiham during the long hot summer of 1976, when I was 12. In the decades that followed, the canal became a haven of peace and tranquility for me as it has been for so many people.
When painting the canal, I have always tried to capture not just an image, but the feeling I get when I go there. To me there is something cathedral-like in the way the light tumbles down through the trees and onto the flat green water. For this particular painting, I decided to take a small plein air piece I did of a pleasure barge on the canal, and work it up in the studio,
