I’ve been thinking about this question. Do I have any favourite babies? Out of all the work I’ve created, both art and music, do I have any which I’m particularly proud of? It’s a difficult question to answer, because sometimes a painting or a composition can caouse great pain in it’s gestation, and when I’ve finally finished, I have two conflicting feelings towards it – I never want to see it again, but at the same time I am inordinately proud of the work simply because of the pain I went through to complete it.

Bath Abbey – a favourite from a difficult birth

One such work was my painting of Bath Abbey, which actually was so painstaking that I painted it over the course of three whole years – returning to it every so often to do a little more. Yet I was very proud of it when I’d finished. Pleased with the way it finally turned out.

Wild Horses – my all-time favourite painting

There is one painting of which I am most proud, not because it was especially difficult, but because I think it works from many different points of view. It is the painting of a coastal sunset which I called “Wild Horses” because – well, I think it’s fairly obvious where the title came from – think the “Flight to the Ford” from Lord of the Rings and you’re on the right track.

I think in this painting, I was able to capture the texture of the water and the rocks, the movement of the water, and then that sunset, which all of the colours reflected in both sky and sea. I’m just immensely proud of what I was able to capture, and would gladly have kept it for myself. It sold and is now gracing the walls of a cottage in North Wales.

Lord of the Rings

In terms of music, that often seems to be easier for me to bring to birth. Maybe it’s the intrinsic flow of a piece of music – it’s got its own forward momentum which feels as if it carries me along. But that’s not to say that every piece is easy. One of my releases, my music Inspired by Lord of the Rings, took years and years to reach a point at which I felt I could release it. I started writing it about 30 years ago if truth be told, but never had the means or the confidence to finish it. New sampled instrument libraries and the ability to produce an album at home meant that suddenly I was able to finally let it out into the world. Some of it sounds quite immature now to me, but I’m rproud that I finally finished it and allowed it to be heard.

My Favourite Score

But of course there are pieces of which I’m immensely proud – my favourite works if you like. One of them is a score for an EWTN TV film I recently completed, called “Faith of our Fathers”. This gave me the opporrtunity to really get my chops into some dramatic scenes – scenes of fear, of chase, of passion. The music seemed to come quite easily, quite organically, as if the scenes themselves were producing the music. Indeed the director only asked for a couple of very minor tweaks. This is the closest I’ve got to writing the sort of music I’ve always dreamed of writing.