Painter and composer John Townsend was born in England but has lived in France for most of his life. Following a multi-national and eclectic career as a musician, a human resource director and founder of his own train-the-trainer institute near Geneva, John has been painting and exhibiting internationally for over 25 years.

He and his wife Fiona have recently moved to a permanent home on Arran so as to be closer to Fiona’s family on the mainland.

His colours are deep indigos and light-filled blues and whites; his canvasses with a rough, tactile finish evoke the gables of the solid crofts of celtic shorelines.

As an inquisitive traveller John has always been drawn to the wild empty spaces at the ends of the earth where he has tried to capture the atmosphere of their lonely poetry, to seize a moment where the light changes or a wave surges and breaks.

He is almost exclusively inspired by all those peaceful places where we can get away from busyness, by light on the sea and by unreachable horizons which seem to melt into the sky.