The Queen of Lanzorotte. Painting

Born of Irish parents, I spent most of my formative years in Ireland where I found myself living amongst a primitive, kindly people, a peasant society that seemed to exist in a strange kind of stasis: a kind of nether world that left them in an almost schizophrenic state, as they tried to balance their ancient pagan beliefs, with what seemed to them,at the time, to be the new fangled repression of the Catholic church. Looking back on it now, it seems to me that their pagan beliefs held much more sway over their thinking than the teachings of Rome but then we all tend to see what we want to take see, so I'm happy to accept that others may think differently. Either way, one thing I do know, and that's that those experiences have come to provide most of the subject matter for much of my work ever since. After I'd left school, knowing little I have to confess, other than the convoluted teachings of the church, I attended Kingston school of Art in Surrey, where I studied painting for three years. Having been a rather sickly child, I was often bed bound, so, if a pencil and a piece of paper happened to come to hand off I went: I'd apparently drawn from the age or three or four, or rather scribbled, as my mother called it, so it was hardly surprising, that after having been fortunate enough to be able to go to Art school, the experience certainly helped to confirm a rather vague wish to become an artist rather than a captain of industry, even if it did little else other than provide me with a good time. Following this, I spent a year or so drifting around London coffee bars and jazz clubs, being a rather vain, hedonistic youth, as one does, but then, having eventually tired of that, one day I just decided to move down to Cornwall where I lived in a series of places: including Zennor, Hayle and St Ives. Now at that time, St Ives was full of very well known artists who: being much influenced by American abstraction, naturally painted abstracts, in other words, it certainly wasn't the place to be if you wanted to make your mark as a figurative painter. But, for me at that time, it was heaven on earth, so, with sun and sea, who cared about reputations anyway? Eventually I married and had a child, and we continued to live down there for close on twelve years.