About me

Born in 1967 in Newcastle upon Tyne, on the day the Beatles released the Sgt. Pepper album, I’ve been looking, drawing and painting for as long as I remember. I trained in illustration at Kingston University, and then took a post-grad degree at Central St Martin’s School of Art.

As a freelance illustrator I produced images for publishing houses, corporate brochures and packaging, with clients including Random House, Penguin Books, PWC and Marks and Spencer.

After a while I started to weary of the constraints of working to commercial briefs and began to focus on making my own work, curating three solo shows in London venues before being invited to exhibit at Chris Beetles gallery in London’s St James’s. Two successful solo shows there followed, and I continue to collaborate with other galleries and artists in group and solo shows: see further details of past exhibitions here.

Over the years I’ve enjoyed teaching, and have designed and run art courses for adults, and SEN adults. I visit schools to give workshops in drawing and painting, and once spent a summer as art tutor for a holiday company in the Italian Dolomites. I’ve also been invited to write or collaborate in several practical art books.

Working practice

My early paintings depicted places I’d visited, including China, India and the Mediterranean, capturing the atmosphere and the effects of light. Over time I began to develop a more personal approach to picture-making and became increasingly interested in pushing the more abstract elements of my work.

More recently I’ve started to work on a larger scale, use marks more expressively and enjoy the tactile qualities of the paint. I carry a sketchbook and make sketches en plein air as the starting point for developing artworks back in the studio. I often use collage as a way of simplifying shapes and strengthening compositions, or experiment with printmaking to layer up unpredictable textures.

We’ve now lived near Hampstead Heath in northwest London for 25 years, and being able to visit the same spots over a long period has given me a deeper relationship with my surroundings. I visit certain trees and vistas throughout the seasons and use them as vehicles for whatever obsession is trying to find its way to the surface. I still find inspiration from new places, but now I feel that I’m in control of the particular story I want to tell, rather than recording every detail of the landscape.