Another Puddle Painting

Born in Fulham, London in 1964, he started drawing like all children their world, the way they see it : mum, dad, house, flowers, castles, battlescenes, cars, cross aeroplanes dropping felt-tip bombs, soldiers shooting dotted lines to sign up and die upon. In seeing what the « real world » had on offer he ran away with the fairies at the earliest opportunity. The fisrt time he breathed it was outside under night skies full of stars and it was then he began to really learn about perspective. Moving away from London, at first to Cornwall, then to Devon, he drew at first to please those around him, concentrating mostly on traveller and folklore pieces. He also worked as a free artist for the ANC and Friends of the Earth amongst others, producing also his own work such as the book « Once Upon a Time There Was a Tree ». Later travelling in his 1960's bus « Molly » he felt a new joy, « Living like a real animal ». He began to create his own more singular pieces and this gave his emotions more freedom to develop. His style became socio-political. At the end of the 1980's he built large pyrotechnic sculptures. This served not only to dispel all the questions of the value of art but placed them in people's memory - never faded and criticised by time but guarded like lost love. The summer of 1989 saw some of the largest pieces such as « The impossible Birthday Present » a 20m long scrap and copper dragon which burnt lilac and emerald before being simply weighed in. The pyrotechnics ended in September 1989 in a Finale at Dartington Hall, Devon UK where he burnt over 300 of his pictures which heated water to share a mango tea with the 80 priviledged people present. He then left England in his bus to travel through France drawing in the cafes and streets until his encounter with Danielle Jacqui and the Singulier Movement. He was invited to join them in their Premier Exposition in 1990 in the village of Roquevaire, Bouches du Rhone. It was here in this forum of freedom his work was seen by an audience, many with an understanding of « Art brut », « Outsider » and « Naïve » painters. This though was a true movement with real contradictions, a « Movement Singulier » response was favourable the pictures communicating with people's inner lives, their dreams, their desires and disappointments. He travelled through the mountains of Southern Spain, through Holland and Germany. There were new encounters and new jobs every few hundred miles.