'Richard Thorn's watercolours are vibrant, grounded, and intensely atmospheric - they feel like entering a memory you didn't know you had. His work captures light and space with such honesty that it transforms the room, bringing in the calm, open energy of the landscape itself.'
Richard Thorn is a watercolourist who doesn't just observe nature - he lives in its light. Growing up by the coast in Torquay, he learned early that the sea changes every moment, the air shifts, and shadows don't hold still. His paintings come from that kind of restlessness: he's driven to catch the soul of a place, not just its surface.
He works mainly in watercolour, but he's not precious about it - gouache, ink, even acrylics sometimes creep into his palette. He uses them to build depth, to make light punch, and to make texture hum. His technique is born from years of sketching outdoors, but the real magic happens in his studio, where he refines what he's seen with intentionality.
Thorn's influences are broad - English watercolour traditions, French Impressionists, and American realists - but he's never copying. He's translating: distance, light, and memory all fold into his landscapes. For him, a painting isn't complete until it feels like a place you could step into, until it has the quiet energy that makes you lean in.