Mark Harris — painting the combes and skies of Dorset, sketch pad in hand.

I'm London-born, but the teenage years I spent soaking up the landscapes of Dorset and Devon never quite let go.

I'm self-taught, and I wear my single O Level badge with quiet pride — as a dyslexic, it's the only one I came home with. For most of my working life I painted around the edges of demanding jobs, in evenings and odd weekends, until in my early fifties I finally gave myself permission to do this full-time, from my own studio.

I've worked in most mediums but acrylic is the one that fits — it lets me push from transparent washes to thick, worked texture in the same piece, and Indian ink is what pulls it all together at the end. Who says there are rules? If Picasso could break them, so can I.

After a wonderful chapter running Briantspuddle Art Gallery and our little B&B, we recently packed up and moved a few valleys west to Sydling St Nicholas — a stone's throw from Cerne Abbas and the famous chalk giant on the hill. Being in a new place really does heighten the senses: woodland and heathland swapped for rolling combes, Forestry Commission land for farmland, dairy herds hemmed in by hedgerow and stone.

I have less studio space here for now, so I'm working through a curious chapter — the biggest views and the vastest skies on the smallest of canvases. The challenge has been more rewarding than I'd have guessed. The doubt is still there, of course; I compare myself with other artists, with the opinions of the "art world," with the quiet voice asking what's the point if it's all been done before. So I go back to the beginning. Up the steep hill out of the village, with my rucksack and the hound, to see if I can decode what's in front of me without losing the sense of the moment.

My work has found homes across the UK and over in America. I love the commissions — whisky labels, pieces for interior designers, contributions to hospitals — anywhere a wall needs a quiet window onto somewhere green.

I paint when the light tells me to. With my campervan and my Dalmatian, Maddie, beside me, I'm rarely far from the next view.