Michael Roscoe works as a commercial illustrator and graphic designer but has only recently found the time to return to his love of oil painting.

"I felt that after earning a living having to fit in to the commercial world for so long, never being entirely free to do what I really wanted, it was time to cut down on work and get back to painting in oils. For over twenty years I have worked in various media from acrylic to computer graphics, but not oils, which take far too long to dry for the instant demands of commerce. The compromise you make when working for others means the artwork rarely ends up exactly how you want it, so now I am getting back to the true art of expressing my own feelings on canvas.

"Most of the paintings I'm doing at the moment are part of a series of landscapes showing different views of St Albans Abbey, as it's near where I live, although I'm also working on a few paintings of Normandy as we go there regularly. I take lots of photographs and work from those. People have said to me that they haven't noticed some of the views of the Abbey before - it's because I've used a bit of artistic licence and cleared away a few trees and so on, but the views are there, especially in the winter, if you know where to look. Sometimes I'll take photos from some distance away using a telephoto lens and paint that view - it gives a different perspective to the scene."

Michael Roscoe