A strange brown cloud rising was a mystery and this painting describes the answer.

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Driving home one hot evening after work, the sky was a clear blue when I noticed a huge brown shelf‑like cloud rising over the moor. Fire was the only explanation I could imagine, and by the time I reached home, curiosity — and a free evening — pushed me back out the door. I drove up to Buckstone Edge to try to see where the blaze was, I could see the direction where the flames were, so I kept heading that way.

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The journey took me towards Oldham and through Delph, where the darkness revealed flames spreading across the hillsides. I stopped to take photographs through the trees, the full moon lighting the sky in a strange, dramatic glow — the moment captured in this painting. Eventually, I found the fire in Stalybridge, burning alarmingly close to the houses.

It was a surreal mix of danger, beauty and adventure — a moment that stayed with me.

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It took me an hour to make the drive home afterwards, the night still carrying the heat and colour of the moor on fire. Ever since that night, the smell and sight of that kind of brown cloud instantly tells me there is a moorland fire.