Renowned artist Barry Herniman has long combined his twin passions of painting and travelling. In his early days he captured travelling experiences on film, but increasingly he recorded the landscapes that inspired him in the pages of his sketchbooks, where transitory moments of light and emotion have been fixed in fluid masterpieces of the watercolourist’s art.

In this stunning collection of some of the choicest pages of his sketchbooks, Barry Herniman commences his journeys in the British Isles, with typically English pastoral landscapes, the wild and rugged West Coast of Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man.

Moving further afield he samples the sun drenched vistas of Andalucia, with their classic white villages and baked earth. Still in Europe he travels around Sardinia, Greece and Croatia before moving to North Africa to sample the delights of Egypt’s fabulous temples and Tunisia’s ancient cities. And across “the pond” in New England he revels in all the blinding colours of the Fall.

Each sketch evokes a memory of a time and a place special to the artist but communicated directly to the viewer, who can immediately identify with both the scene and the sensation inspired by each location. Beautifully reproduced, the sketches are here accompanied by some of his “finished” paintings which together present a fully-rounded view of Barry Herniman’s outstanding talent.

Born in West Drayton, Middlesex, Barry Herniman has travelled around the UK and abroad since an early age. He now lives in the Wye Valley with his wife Sally and their four cats. He has had a varied career, including draughtsman, surveyor, graphic designer and illustrator and set up his own graphics company in 1986. As computers took over, less work was generated so in the mid 1990s Barry decided to become an artist full time.

Since then he has held demonstrations and workshops to Art Clubs and Societies all over the UK and Ireland. He also tutors painting holidays both at home and abroad which are very popular.

Latterly he has concentrated on tutoring his sketchbook techniques ‘en plein air’ taking people to such exotic venues as Spain, Greece, Italy, Ireland and New England. He has written articles for many publications and is a regular contributor to The Artist magazine. He has two books published on watercolour painting techniques and a new DVD is in preparation for 2011.

Imprint: Halstar. ISBN 978 1 906690 29 8, hardback, 238x258mm, 144 pages. Published September 2011.