A Personal note

I was born in 1949, my father was from the Isle of Lewis (of Norwegian descent) and my mother was born in the Blue Ball in Grantchester. I grew up in the East Anglian countryside, and have fond memories of the 1950s - wild flowers among the corn, clouds of butterflies, and largely quiet and safe roads - not much private motoring then! The painting bug bit me at school aged sixteen and in 1968 I eagerly accepted a place at Reading University. I couldn't have gone at a worse time. The people who ran the department had decided that painting was dead and that anyone who wanted to do it was a misguided eccentric. I survived, thanks to the support and advice of John Wonnacott and Ray Atkins, the only lecturers sympathetic to figurative painting.

After leaving university, and for the next thirty three years, I had to earn a living doing jobs with no relation to my consuming interest, moving to London in 1984. In 2005 I took early retirement and was at last able to paint full time – a great sense of release. I greatly admire many other painters, past and present, but as far as I'm concerned, the golden age is the fifteenth century (both Italian and Flemish schools) – there has never been such an extraordinarily high standard of work before or since. If there is any conscious aim behind my own work, it is to attempt to recapture some of the precision and serenity of those early masters.

I have exhibited as follows:
Solo shows;
Cambridge Arts and Leisure Centre 1973
The Quay, St Ives 1974
AUScotts Restaurant, Cambridge 1975
Cory Lodge, Cambridge Botanic Garden, 1971
The Shop Gallery, Cambridge 1992
Grant Bradley Gallery, Bristol 2010

Joint show:
Bedford Public Library 1991 (with Brent Nokes)

Group shows:
Cambridge Drawing Society 1973, 1976, 1977
Sealink Competition 1979
Laing Competition, Mall Galleries 1987, 1990, 1991
Spectator Competition, Barbican Gallery 1992
Lynn Painter - Stainers Prize 2007, 2008
New English Art Club, Mall Galleries 2010