BIOGRAPHY

Emerging English figurative painter in oils.

A few years ago I gave up my career in the film & cinema industry, to pursue my passion for painting in oils.

I had previously studied at Heatherley's School of Fine Art in London and upon retirement completed a Diploma in Oil Painting over two years with Martin Kinnear at his Norfolk Painting School. I rejoined Heatherley's again in 2023 to complete their Post-Diploma qualification in Figurative Painting, under Fred Crayk.

The Post-Diploma 2024 Exhibition will be held at Heatherley's School of Fine Art, in Lots Road Chelsea, from 16th September to 4th October. See details on the next "Exhibition" tab.

Exhibition Personal Statement:

I am interested in what lies beyond the image and in the deeper resonances that figurative depictions can generate.

These works are not paintings of a screwdriver or a prone man, and they aspire to be more even than paintings about the nature of a screwdriver or a man. They are works where the picture plane is intended to act as a portal to calmer, more personal and more intense contemplation.

I work in three different styles which are complementary:

Still life: working tools depicted in sparse environments and in precise detail which allow the viewer’s mind to travel past the picture plane to consider associations, suggestions and memories. Their style is influenced by Adriaen Coorte and Juan Sanchez Cotan, the Nicholsons and Uglow. Quieter, more meditative art feels appropriate for our current times.

Figure painting: a different approach to the examination of still life, these are depictions of the recumbent male form. More expressively vigorous and corporeal, these works generate more emotional responses, while exploring many of the same themes around the nature of an object or a being. They owe much to the influence of Daumier, Munch and Schiele.

Plane pattern painting: articulations of the interplay between form and colour hold the eye, as the viewer explores the emotional and conceptual associations beyond the rhythmic representation. Repeated plane pattern art has been prominent from Lascaux and aboriginal art, through almost every culture and religion, to modernism. It has run through post-modern painting up to the present, through the likes of Mondrian, Klimt, Warhol, Riley and Hirst. I incorporate representational images to enrich this contemplation.

My tripartite use of colour originates in the study of Sanzo Wada, who in the 1930’s captured Japanese perceptions of colour, later summarised in A Dictionary of Colour Combinations.