A Brief Biography
My creative process has been closely intertwined through the years with a need to see and explore ‘beneath the surface’ – and into the amplified fields that reflect the human psyche and the human journey.
In my mid twenties my first engagement with painting was purely on a psychological level, exploring how spontaneous momentary paintings might reflect a psychological present, something of the field of my being, the relation between inner and outer.
From here I found my way through various psychological (etc) explorations. I took part in many workshops in personal development and mythology, explored psychologically and mythologically focussed astrology, wrote dream diaries and read a considerable amount of the writings of CG Jung (amongst many others). All of which led to a training in humanistic psychology. However after two years intense formal training various avenues began to carry me back towards drawing and painting. My focus having sufficiently shifted I took a Foundation and Degree in Fine Art Painting between 1992-96.
At completion of my degree I found a space at the Artspace studios, McArthurs Warehouse close to the SS Great Britain in Bristol. When Artspace received lottery funding the artists put in a great deal of time and energy to contribute to the conversion of the old Brooke Bond tea factory and as artists representative on the trustees board I was fully involved.
in 1998 I made my first significant sale of paintings from the new studios at Spike Island. It was a time of mixed riches. I was also diagnosed with a long term health condition but was given the go ahead to make a three month trip travelling around India. This I followed in 2002 with a similar trip to SE Asia, travelling through Thailand, Laos, Penang, Cambodia and Sumatra. As well as being a rich source of experience I also made hundreds of drawings.
From 2000 I showed and sold paintings and prints from a homemade street stall (which had three or four different incarnations). Small paintings went all over the world and the showcase also brought interest back to my studio (at this time, having left Bristol, being part of an old engineering works in the south of Bath) and larger paintings.
After the SE Asian trip I also showed at Olympia with Beth Carter and this led to a meeting with David and Victoria Jackson. I had the pleasure of showing through them in Hertfordshire for several years. I also showed in Bath, Cardiff and Cornwall.
In 2005 arose a sense of wanting to do something with skills and perspectives gained through my earlier engagement in the field of humanistic psychology. This led to further training and practice in counselling and psychotherapy, which ran alongside my painting process and development for the next twelve years. Inevitably this choice left little energy and time for showing my work. However Open Studios allowed me to contact an audience once or twice a year until 2014.
In 2014 my explorations of painting, psychology and dreamwork continued in Cornwall for a four and a half year period. In 2017 I made the decision to focus my energies exclusively once more in my paintings and in 2018 I returned to Bath.
Since then, three trips underground have been a significant addition to my working process, providing further reflections on the relationships between the physical, psychological and spiritual.
Sources of subject matter include :-
- Myth And Fairy Tale
- Dream
- India and Se Asia
- Bath City Spain Cornwall Horses Dance
- Music Serendipitous sights and sounds
- Drawings Experiences
- And many other artists, well known or not, too many to name, mostly painters and including those early artists who painted on rock walls, in caves…