A landscape painter, mostly in acrylics (and on the side, a competitive orienteer). Subjects are usually places of some personal significance for which I have taken a decent photo.
A more-or-less complete gallery can be found online at painters-online.co.uk/artists/sloop. I’ve had a picture selected for each of the last four TALP annual exhibitions.
If you like what you see, I’d be happy to consider commissions of photos that are meaningful for you.
I’d also be happy to supply digital prints of any of my pictures (I don’t use thick paint, so colour-matched digital prints on good paper come out almost indistinguishable from the original and can be done for around £20 depending on size) – contact ajohnbritton at gmail.com. If you’d rather have the original, you can make me an offer!
Samples of my last few years’ work, starting with the view from the Old Mill café up towards the Pin Mill building in Bodnant Gardens, and a lonely rowan tree in the depths of a Finnish forest.
Most years, I help put out checkpoints for the Original Mountain Marathon (OMM), held in late October. The 2024 event was in Glen Artney, Scotland, 2023 in Snowdonia, 2022 in Langdale.
Paintings commissioned by friends – a photo of Whitehaven Harbour on an A1 canvas, a combo of photos of chalk quarries on Box Hill also on A1 canvas, and a photo of Iceland’s Red Waterfall at A3.
Last summer, a friend had major surgery done on a big tree dominating her garden in Rawtenstall, and sent me a brilliant photo of the tree in a splendid sunset.
The Ribblehead Viaduct, in memory of a very old friend who passed unexpectedly a few months after organising an outing along the iconic Settle-Carlisle line. I tried for a fading-light vibe, and loved the mighty Ingleborough looming in the background.
The Clifton Suspension Bridge – a fabulous piece of engineering close to where one of my daughters lives. To get this shot with all the supports perfectly lined up I had to lean out very close to passing traffic!
Eccles Grammar School (early 1970s). A few years after I left in 1969, the school was demolished and became a housing estate. Both my mother and father had been pupils there. At my Box Hill friend’s suggestion, I did a memorial picture based on a photo by Jim Simpson on the EGS archive web site. The green and yellow leaves were the school colours, the bricks were memorably orange, and the sunset colours indicate the forthcoming demise. This went down well on the Facebook group and there are several prints now scattered amongst ex-pupils, one in Canada.
Chatterley Whitfield Colliery – our first house was barely a mile from here. At the time the Potteries area was thriving with several coal mines, the massive Shelton Bar steelworks, a Michelin tyre factory and dozens of active potteries, all of which were gone within 10 years. During covid, we did a socially-distanced event in what is now a “country park” and I got a photo looking down onto what is now mostly a ruin, and painted it in something approaching sunset colours.
The Scottish connection – my other daughter lives North-West of Glasgow, and her husband hails from Bolton and loves all things blue and chocolate. A couple of early oil paintings show Loch Lomond with its Ben Lomond and paddle steamer, and Overtoun park where their huskies can run free, with views down to Dumbarton Castle and the Clyde. Then a more recent acrylic shows Slattery’s chocolate emporium in Whitefield (with a colour palette of white, milk and plain chocolate), and their last view of civilisation as they drive North – Rivington Pike, Winter Hill and the Bolton Wanderers stadium.
Marple Canal – an early pastel of Lock 4 (where the shapes of the towpath and overflow channel seem to wrap arms around the lock; an early painting of the canal aqueduct and railway viaduct; one of a series of lockside buildings – this one of the junction at Top Lock; a return to the wrapping of Lock 4 in Autumn colours.
And finally, I took some unusual photos at the RHS Bridgewater “Glow” light show at Christmas 2023:
