About

 I believe my interest in painting started when I was a patient in hospital for a period as a young child. I can even claim a favourable review for one picture in a local newspaper. Unfortunately, art was not on the curriculum after the first two years at secondary school and I had already embarked on a scientific education before I undertook a painting course for adults at Morley College in London, in my twenties. This was where I first started working en plein air which has become a lasting influence, the first of those which have shaped what I do today.

Following Morley College, and having decided to follow a full time degree course, I spent three years in the cloistered environment (as it was at the time) of the Fine Art department at Reading University. My degree featured principally landscapes including my first drawings in charcoal and white pastel. A reviewer commented later ‘his subtle use of white chalk on rubbed charcoal give an impression of colour in spite of the image being monochrome’.

On leaving Reading University, I started working independently as an artist and had my first exhibitions. I also started teaching art in adult education, and as a freelancer worked within the education programme at the Imperial War Museum. More recently, I’ve been teaching life drawing at Heath Robinson Museum in Pinner and I was invited to teach life drawing for a few days at the School of Art in Le Havre. The experience of teaching can clarify your thinking with regard to your own work and vice versa, that is, one helps the other.

Other influences include membership of local art societies, which offer the opportunity to exhibit each year and whose activities and members offer further insights.

Online drawing and painting over the period of lockdown brought a new way of working and subject matter I hadn’t considered before, wild life drawing and painting, which I’m now continuing to do ‘in the field’.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

Gagliardi Contemporary Art, London

Llewellyn Alexander Gallery, London

Studio 1, Fulham

Mall Galleries, London

Jelly Leg’d Chicken Arts Gallery, Reading

Camelford Art Gallery, Cornwall

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

Exhibition Centre, Henley-on-Thames

Pangbourne College

The Granary, Newbury

Leighton Park School, Reading

Northwood and Pinner Liberal Synagogue