About me

“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” 

– Vincent van Gogh

I’ve always drawn, painted and made photographs. I prefer to paint in oils and use various media such as cold wax, but I also paint with acrylics and draw with pencil, charcoal and pastels. I like painting and drawing as physical activities in their own right and enjoy experimenting with different processes regardless of the subject matter.

My work ‘lives’ somewhere between representation and abstraction and is often related to landscape with emphasis on the use of colour and surface. I’m have been particularly influenced by the varied and remarkable landscapes of the West Midlands: The Black Country, Birmingham, Shropshire, Staffordshire and the Severn Valley, collectively the birthplace off the Industrial Revolution, but also a source of natural and geological wonder.

Art is our expression of our lifetime experience and the marks we make are unique to ourselves. Given identical tools and materials, left to their own devices, no two people will make identical marks. It started with a hand on a cave wall, and all meaning started as art. It’s what we humans do.

In 1980 I graduated in Fine Art from the University of Wolverhampton but subsequently worked in occupations mostly unrelated to art until I retired in 2018, after which I was able to devote my time to painting. I joined the Wolverhampton Society of Artists, through which I made many friends and have had the opportunity to make my work available to a wider audience.

More recently I’ve been involved in a small not-for-profit company, G5 Studio Group, whose aim is to demystify and make art available for local people in Wolverhampton. Long term we aim to build a creative community based in an old grammar school, Newhampton Art Centre, and to provide a strategy for its refurbishment and continued existence as a community arts hub. We organise events and workshops which encourage and enable people who love to create, but who wouldn’t consider themselves artists to have access to tools and materials and the opportunity to exhibit their work in a non-threatening environment. In addition we are making resources available to people who may or may not consider themselves to be artists, but for whom art is essential for their mental health and continued wellbeing. In this role I regard myself as primarily a mediator and facilitator.

Although my work tends to abstraction, I also enjoy observational drawing including still life and life drawing which helps me to develop and maintain the underpinning skills of observation and hand and eye coordination which relate to my main body of work. My work has been included in the Wolverhampton Society of Art New Members exhibition in 2018 at Newhampton Arts Centre and the Society’s Centenary exhibition in 2020 in Wolverhampton Art Gallery. I have also had work exhibited twice in the Royal Birmingham Society of Art’s Friends exhibitions. Most recently I have exhibited in two Art 4 All exhibitions in 2022 and 2023 at Newhampton Arts Centre.