ABOUT ME

I was born and grew up in Cheshire spending a lot of my time absorbed in painting and drawing. I chose to do a Foundation Course at Bath Academy of Art followed by a degree in Fine Art at Preston Polytechnic when the art department was in Lancaster. I have been self-employed as an artist since 1982, initially producing realistic life size paintings of everyday objects.

I began scanning objects into my computer and developed a series of work based on oyster shells. I liked arranging them to look like flowers and experimented with other shells as well as MRI scans of the body which strangely resembled other natural forms. I was interested in the way both shells and flowers open and close to reveal and to protect. The series ranges from digital prints, drawings, watercolours and mono prints to large paintings in acrylic and the work has been bought by places as diverse as a hospital, a garden centre, a Wetherspoons pub and night club in Morocco!

I have always had a strong desire to live near the sea yet I have lived for the last 20 years in Milton Keynes, which is as far inland as possible in England.

Since moving to St Leonards-on-Sea in 2002 I have not been disappointed by seaside life. I enjoy finding things washed up on the shore and the unpredictable nature of what is discovered is a constant joy. I am now making a new series of work using items ranging from cuttlefish to old rope whilst trying to keep my eye on the bigger picture.

"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me." Sir Isaac Newton