CONTACT Painting

I was born in the UK in 1969. At years old my family moved to a place called the Isle of Wight, a small island off the South coast of England. My Father ran a large hotel in a town called Ventnor. I grew up with a lot of freedom, and a love of wild places and salt water. As a young man, before leaving the Island to study, I’d spend most of my free time on the beaches along the Southwest coast, wind-blown, desolate, and fascinating. It was the time spent there, clambering the crumbling cliffs fossil hunting, body surfing the breakers, and lying naked on the shingle, that taught me how important it is for me get contact with nature and absorb its energy. I studied fine art and pattern making for 4 years, first in Portsmouth, then on a degree course in the Northern city of Manchester. Over those years I added a passion for the human figure as part of what drives my work, through countless classes of life drawing. Visiting museums when I could, either in Manchester or in London gave a buzz too. I’d spend hours in the natural history museums, and still more amongst the exhibitions from the Greek and Roman classical worlds. During my time in Manchester, I took up skiing on trips to the Italian Alps. I liked the Italian vibe; the geography and the nature, the food, the art, the culture, and the sense of history that you get turning any street corner. So, by the end of the degree course, I’d decided that I’d be going to Italy. In 1990, on my 21st birthday, I arrived in Milan, for an interview with a textile company. I did get offered a job, but the deal of free bed&board with no pay did not appeal. I headed into Como, which was and still is the hub of Italian textile design, and landed a job as an artist in a small design studio. Italian fashion was at its apex, and so was the production of pattern design. This first job was great, creatively very free and experimental, but my wilder side had trouble being directed and I moved on after a year. In 1999 I got head-hunted and ended up as the creative director of a part of Como’s biggest design studio. In 2003 I became a partner. I travelled the world, selling a collection of print designs that I directed with a staff of 20+ in-house artists. It was fun, but the growing crisis in the textile world, and the advancement of digital designing, changed the focus from creativity to production. Around 2014 I began to get frustrated.