Arnie Bailey - all my life I’ve been passionate about art, but never got around to actually painting anything myself. Life got in the way. So when a global pandemic came along and then life under lockdown, it was now or never.

I chose now rather than never.

I grew up in Northern Ireland, on the coast near to the Giant’s Causeway. How could I not be inspired by the wild seas of the North Atlantic? You’ll see that many of my paintings try to express this fascination.

In my mid 20s I moved to England and for the past 25 years have lived in a beautiful part of the Oxfordshire countryside. This landscape has also provided me with a lots of inspiration.

It’s classic Coast v Countryside with a measure of abstraction thrown in!

I usually work in watercolours or gouache and occasionally pastels.