About Me

  • I'm a Manchester based contemporary, abstract painter. But that wasn’t always the case.
    Born in Farnham, Surrey, I spent my first thirty-seven years going through the motions. Then I walked into a gallery...

    Born in Farnham, Surrey, I spent my first thirty-seven years going through the motions. Then I walked into a gallery in California, stood in front of a single painting, and something shifted. I left a career in business behind and started again.

     

    I've never thought of painting as a career, even now. It's a calling. It's the one thing I feel compelled to do, and the honest truth is I can't imagine doing anything else. If it earned me nothing, I would still be in the studio every morning.

     

    I trained in fine art at the University of Salford, but it was when I locked myself away in my studio for two years that the real learning happened. That learning continues to this day. I get there early, because the morning gives me solitude, and solitude gives me clarity. The first thing I do is turn on music. The last thing I do before I leave is turn it off. Everything in between is the work. I don't plan what comes out of it. The feeling finds its way to the surface and onto the canvas, and most of the time I'm following it rather than leading it.

     

    I think of my paintings as posing questions rather than providing answers. The joy is in the search. I work in different ways, and each series asks something different of me, so it matters to me that you can see why each one is different. There are no rules. There is only what the painting needs.

     

    Painting gave my life meaning and purpose. It gave me a reason. 

  • There's a symmetry in all of this I can't quite get over. The painting that changed everything hung in a gallery in California, and somehow my own work has since found its way back there, to San Francisco and West Hollywood. From there it has travelled to London, Munich, and as far as Hangzhou. This year it goes further still, to Sydney, for my first solo show at Bonham Gallery. It catches me off guard every time.

     

    And if a piece of my own world brings a little joy into someone else's, even in a small way, that is everything to me. When someone takes the time to tell me that a painting has meant something to them, I never take it lightly. It is the part of all this I am most grateful for.