A Passage to Distant Places Painting

I was born in Liverpool and was educated at the University of Manchester, Swansea University and the Polytechnic of Wales where I studied History, Philosophy and Intellectual and Art History (MA). I have lived and worked in Ireland, Germany, Holland and the UK as a barman, labourer, soldier, Aircraft sealer, Trade Marks Examiner, Ministerial Policy Adviser in Trade & Industry (London), Head of International Relations at the Welsh Office and Principal Private Secretary to the Presiding Officer at the National Assembly for Wales. I left the Civil Service in 2005 and dedicated myself to art and writing. My large, vibrant and luminous paintings are metaphysical in approach and, as with my writing, personal and intense. They frequently convey contemporary urban realism in a ruined, isolated or detached landscape. The figures in them are always captive watchers of their environment or circumstances, trapped by their inability to communicate. I call these works "narrative" because what is important in the paintings is what happens before or after the moment depicted - the viewer must move beyond the canvas to ascertain this. My smaller paintings are "etudes", conceived as intimate studies of the mood and condition of individuals. They are almost always painted in blue. The Night Traveller (MJ Maguire) was my first novel and was published in 2010 and I have published and recorded many poems which are widely available in numerous publications and online sources. I regularly publish articles in journals on a diverse number of subjects from International Affairs and Ethics to Metaphysics, the Theory of Knowledge and Modern Art. I also have a highly regarded youtube channel called "They Got Away With Murder", which is researched, written and narrated by myself. My True Crime book "The Murder of Madame X - The Limeslade Mystery, 1929" was published in July 2021.