The Artist

I was born in Salford and grew up there. The first paintings I saw were by LS Lowry at the local art gallery and my interest in his work has remained with me to this day.

The need to paint comes from wanting to make images suggested by the poetry and flux of everyday life. This comes from an impulse which goes back to childhood and being alone and trying to make sense of it all. As I have lived much of my life next to a city and mostly London, not surprisingly, people and public spaces are the main inspiration for my work.

I like to explore patterns and sweeps of everchanging figures arranged against a white ground. Painting for me brings a kind of consolation because I feel that it is only with people and the spaces around them that something resembling a world comes into being.

The Stage has also been an influence, going back to a period I spent working in London theatres shortly after leaving Art School. Sometimes I use painting as a way of creating a simple stage set where different characters are assembled in front of thresholds and boundaries and where the picture space is demarcated between the present and a world of infinite possibility. I am fascinated by those boundaries between the world we know and recognise and the hidden world we cannot deny

In his words ...

'The impulse to paint comes from a need to make images from my experience of the world. I want to create something permanent from the poetry and flux of everyday life.

Themes and subject matter have included journeys and voyages, travellers, places visited, entrances and doorways, landscapes and parks, figure groups and crowds and London, especially London. In all my paintings there are strong personal associations from past events and places.

To begin a painting is like starting out on a voyage of discovery and then to push further on into the unknown where things lie waiting to be discovered like an archaeologist making an important dig. The deeper one goes into these places the more one finds there to carry back into the world again.

I like to work on canvas and board in oils. I may work on a painting over a long period, often revisiting it over a number of years before it feels right. Pictures are built up slowly and carefully with several layers of paint being left to dry and harden and then being worked on again in order to achieve a subtle effect of glazing and colour.

I am fascinated by those boundaries between the world we know and recognise and the hidden world we cannot deny.'

Press

The Tablet art review March 1996
RA Magazine Summer Edition 1998
Catalogue, Robert Hardy, England and Co, October 1998
Church Times art review 16th October 1998
Church Times 16th February 2000
Times of Malta Feature Article12th August 2001
Daily Telegraph Weekend Review 28th September 2002
Secondary Education Magazine, Interview 5th October 2006