Home - A Brief History...
Born in Lewes, England in 1945, I was exhibiting and selling my paintings by my mid-teens - thanks largely to the guidance of my artist grandfather.
From 1962 I studied composition and classical organ under Professor George Austin in Brighton and continued this training after a move to Chichester in 1965, where I met my wife. Over the next ten years I pursued a career in design and landscape architecture whilst switching my musical allegiance to modern jazz and electronic music, a passion which continues to this day.
In 1975 I finally gave in to my true vocation and settled with my family in a rural valley in Devon and began to paint full-time.
Now, my time is divided between studios in Devon and Southwest France.
Favourite places to paint include South Devon and Exmoor, the Languedoc, Provence, the Cote d'Azur, Liguria, Umbria and Tuscany.
Painting and music have always been competing passions for me. Of the two, painting was my first love and is how I have chosen to make my living for more than thirty years.
My work is largely figurative, ranging from the realist towards, but not very far towards, abstract expressionism.
Over the years, my sketches, studies and field work in general have become quite abstract in nature. I suppose the more personal and intuitive marks made at the time help me to remember not just the details of the subject but some of the feelings evoked by it.
Often a painting, started in the field, can be worked up more fully later. Occasionally, a subject executed in a formal manner just has to be followed by a more spontaneous response to what it was that inspired me. This means that there are often two versions of the same painting.
Whether what inspires me about a scene is immediately given to the viewer as a result of days or weeks in the studio - or appears more slowly due to free and rapid brushwork - the method doesn't matter. The subject is everything.
After all, what am I doing but revealing the beauty of something that had been unnoticed, or sharing the memory of a common experience such as a breathtaking view or dinner on a warm evening by the sea?