I was born in London, within the sounds of the Bow Bells, but my family moved to the safety of rural Lincolnshire within 6 months, after our house was destroyed in the war. When I left school, I completed an apprenticeship as a motor engineer, due to my interest in older cars, particularly sports cars. I started my own business specialising, maintaining and restoring MGs, Morgans, Triumphs etc. After my children left home, I decided to give it all up and follow my passion for water sports. I taught windsurfing in Greece for 15 years and also rediscovered my love of sketching and painting, usually buildings and people (landscapes and trees are not my strong point). I met my present wife whilst working in Greece, and we moved down to live amongst the orchards of Kent at the end of the last millennium. Having left behind a taxi business that I’d established in Lincolnshire, I came to work as a driver for a sports car garage in Canterbury.
As a self taught artist, I have enjoyed and extended my artwork as a hobby in different directions. I was a cartoonist for a local paper for many years in my early days, and sketched a lot with pastels. More recently, I have reproduced the works of old masters as a pavement artist around Canterbury and have more fully immersed myself in painting since retiring a few years ago. I have always painted for the fun of it and still do, and have developed my own more personal style over the past few years. Most of my paintings are of well known local scenes; the buildings are as real and as accurate as I can make them, but the people are from my imagination. However, family and friends have commented on some resemblance to themselves (purely coincidence, I’m sure), and the grey haired man in most painting is usually me. I try to treat the people in my paintings as individuals, each with their own relationships and tales to tell, so I enjoy adding little nuances and quirky things which can be noticed over time as these stories emerge. The thought that somebody has chosen to make one of my paintings a part of their own home is very special to me and I hope that they gain as much pleasure from the image as I have in creating it.