Julian lives and works in the Aveyron in the South of France, painting the ancient volcanic landscapes of the Auvergne and the hills and valleys of the Aveyron to the south. In his work he studies the effects of light and colour on the land and the skies in their ever-changing formations. Julian originally studied fine art and graphics and worked in London. His studio is now in the grounds of his house in France.

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Working in oil, Julian studies the effects of light and colour on the land and the skies in their ever-changing formations. A canvas will usually begin with a rough sketch of charcoal and colour wash, where the major features are found.

"The essential thing in landscape painting is coping with the continual movement, in minutes everything can be quite different. The work can't be fixed, one is recording a period where a cloud formation is interesting now but will be gone in minutes, a hill shadow, the sky, quickly drawn in to later disappear. One has to be prepared,to draw and use colour and take the best as it occures, running over past design where necessary.In effect, one is given many design possibilities with which to form the eventual composition. To begin a work, I cover the entire canvas to allow me to consider the whole composition, it dosen't really matter how accurate the colour is at this point, as long as the whole canvas is brought into working order. It's the most creative time and the time of greatest freedom".

The first washes of colour will be overpainted as conditions change, so the final canvas will usually bear little resemblance to the original scene as the composition supersedes the reality of the subject. There can be a sense of time in a painting, where forms have moved, leaving traces of their origins on the canvas, and this continual movement of paint can sometimes take a piece to near abstraction. But Julian feels, to an extent, that this is how we perceive our world, in a semi abstract way, collecting impressions and rather obscure memories of forms and colours in our movements through our different environments.