About
After an upbringing on the family farm on the coast of North Cornwall, I left my tractor behind to train in graphic design and illustration at Kingston University in the mid '80s. Since then I've spent thirty years in the creative industry in London, first as an illustrator and graphic designer, and now as a full time artist.
Capturing a moment of stillness.
The great outdoors, people, cities, landscapes and their interactions are my inspiration – recording my wanderings in sketches and photos to create a record of visited places that will then inform my studio paintings.
In my work I seek to capture a moment of impression, as when emerging from an underground station into a busy unfamiliar sunlit street, heightened senses, momentary bright light blindness, the confusion of information, noise and movement – each painting seeks to create that initial hazy impression of place fused with precise primary detail, a lamppost, tree, vehicle, a shop window, a rushing commuter.
It is my practice to make several paintings of the same subject with each one evolving in a different way due to the concerted randomness of mark making, overpainting, scraping back, repainting. Eventually my focus goes from the subject matter to the surface of the painting, familiarity with the subject allowing me to make marks of intuitive gesture to attain a figurative interpretation of the familiar.
My work hangs in private collections in Europe, the Middle East and the United States. Galleries representation includes: No Naked Walls in Chertsey and Guildford; The Art Agency in Esher; Box Galleries - Kings Road, Chelsea; Claremont Gallery - Leatherhead, Kent.
