About
Painting Britain's oldest road.
SEAN MONAGHAN · OUTDOOR PAINTER · NORTH WILTSHIRE
I'm Sean Monaghan, an outdoor landscape painter based in North Wiltshire. For the last decade I have painted the Ridgeway, an ancient chalk track known as Britain's oldest road. Now the best of that work is available to own as premium, archival quality open and limited edition prints: The Ridgeway Collection.
On process
Every painting I make happens outdoors, in front of the subject. My work is fast — it has to be. The light and weather on the Ridgeway are fickle and ever-changing.
I dash most pieces in rapidly on the spot in under an hour. I bring others back to the studio for a final resolve, but I make the essential decisions outside, quickly, in front of the thing itself.
The essential decisions are made outside, quickly, in front of the thing itself.
On medium
Oils
I build them up in confident strokes in front of the subject. The slower medium for the days the light holds still just long enough.
Watercolours
I use them for the days when the weather won't sit still and only a wash can catch the atmosphere before it shifts. Speed is not a compromise — it is the point.
Speed is not a compromise — it is the point.
The Ridgeway Collection
A Note on the Ridgeway
The Ridgeway is known as Britain's oldest road — a chalk ridge used for at least five thousand years by traders, drovers and soldiers. Part of an ancient network of chalk downland that once connected Dorset and Norfolk, it runs nearly 90 miles through Wiltshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire.
The North Wiltshire stretch of the Ridgeway features neolithic burial mounds, Bronze Age chalk figures and Iron Age hillforts — Avebury, Hackpen Hill, Barbury Castle, Liddington Castle, Wayland Smithy, the Uffington White Horse.
I paint the Ridgeway because it is what I see every day. I live near the Ridgeway, on the Marlborough Downs, with my wife, young family and two cocker spaniels.
The landscape provides me with an anchor — to home, history and the painting.
Hillforts and beech clumps such as Liddington and Barbury Castle are recurring motifs in this series. They root my paintings in place and time — somewhere people have looked at, stood on and called home for thousands of years.
For the last ten years I have painted this stretch of the Ridgeway in every season and all weathers. The best of that work is now available to own as premium, archival quality open and limited edition prints: The Ridgeway Collection. The work in this collection includes paintings I have shown at exhibitions in Bath, Oxford and Swindon — and a prizewinning piece which led to mentoring by
I paint the Ridgeway the way people who love it feel it.
THE PRINTS
Painted fast. Printed to last.
I reproduce every print from the original work on premium archival paper.
Open Editions
I use pigment inks printed on sustainable, archival cotton-rag paper. No edition limit. The accessible way to collect my work.
Limited Editions
I produce editions of 25 printed on premium Hahnemühle paper. Hand-signed and numbered. Certificate of Authenticity. The collector's choice.