Afternoon Sunlight on Tudor Stairs; Plas Mawr, Conwy.

Oil on Board

40.5x51cm (board)

48x58.5cm (framed)

I took the photograph for this painting at Plas Mawr in Conwy, one of the finest surviving Elizabethan town houses in Britain.

I’ve always been drawn to staircases — spaces that are neither one place nor another, but simply lead us between them. Here it was the worn wooden treads, rough plastered walls, little leaded windows and wonderful rope handrail that caught my attention.

But, inevitably, it was the light that made me want to paint it. Cool daylight filtering through centuries-old windows, catching the plaster and falling across steps worn by generations of feet.