In September, Frodsham Nub News chatted with photographer and mixed-media artist, Andrew Croughton, about his contribution to the Beyond Landscape exhibition, brought to Castle Park Arts Centre by Clipped-in.

Now Andrew is back with his first solo exhibition, From the Water's Edge, a series ofstriking watercolour paintings that capture the swift movement, the soft plumage and the eagle eyes of some of Britain's most beautiful birdlife.

"The paintings come from photographs taken on the Farne Islands off the coast of Northumberland," Andrew tells Frodsham Nub News. "I've had a few trips out there and actually kayaked over to the islands once. It's one of my favourite places to visit.

"The islands are a nature reserve and so the only people that live there are National Trust rangers who stay for part of the year.

"However, you are allowed to go and visit, and as you walk along the pathway round the islands you are bombarded with thousands and thousands of puffins, gannets, cormorants and terns.

"Just off the pathway, you can see the birds' nests in the ground, literally an arm's length away from you.

"I've always wanted to create paintings from my trips there; it's such an amazing place."

While he was at home and with time on his hands during the latest lockdown, Andrew decided to pay tribute to these wild and unhuman habitats by testing out an uncharted artistic territory.

"I have used watercolour before but in a very basic way," Andrew explains. "It took me a week or two to work out my style, because with watercolour you can't control the paint very easily.

"If you follow a 'wet on wet' technique you paint the area you want to cover with water before you introduce the paint.

"The water then guides the paint in quite an unpredictable manner, which creates a feeling of movement that I really like, especially as my subjects were sea birds which live by and off the water."

In the resulting pieces, hazy pools of blue reflect the seamless meeting of land and sea, while deeper flecks of paint appear to fly up and out of the image in showers of spray.

And within this watery scene, Andrew's birds fly, land, hunt and flee in a colourful rush of wing and claw, so vital that they seem likely to flit off the page at any moment.

The flow and flux of these paintings provides a counterpoint to Andrew's work in Beyond Landscape, which roots itself in the awe-inspiring magnitude and permanence of mountain landscapes.

"This exhibition is about what's in the landscape," Andrew explains, adding that he has now begun to incorporate these smaller details into each sweeping hilltop or coastline view that he recreates.

"Later in the year, I will be taking part in an exhibition called New Horizons with Clipped-in, and I have some paintings of Farne Island itself sitting on the horizon, with lots of birds flying around it. So it's going back towards the land and the seascapes, but bringing in my interest for birds as well."

Further details of [I]From the Water's Edge can be found on the Castle Park Arts Centre website and Facebook page

You can view more of Andrew's painting and photography work here.[.I]