Two new landscapes

I thought it might be nice to do my first real blog on here by showing you a couple of my latest paintings. They're both from near to where I live here in Henley-On-Thames. The first is from about two and half miles downstream at Hambleden Lock...

The second is down near to the finishing line of the famous Royal Regatta. The work towards preparing the course and all of the associated marquees, grandstands etc. has been going on for about three months now. This painting is a view across the river and on the left, shows the floating platform which is being used for much of the work...

Both pictures are oil on canvas, sized 20 x 24 inches. Please feel free to ask any questions that you want and I'll be happy to try and answer.

What is Impressionism?

While I get myself ready to officially launch this new blog and open The British Impressionist on Etsy, here is a useful definition of Impressionist art - courtesy of the indispensable Wikipedia:

[Claude Monet - Impression, soleil levant]

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists exhibiting their art publicly in the 1860s. The name of the movement is derived from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric review published in Le Charivari. Characteristics of Impressionist paintings include visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles.