Rakish Print

I was Born in Cambridgeshire, England and have spent most of my life living in England but also spent some of my childhood living in Germany and on the Isle of Man. I studied General Art and Design for two years at the Norfolk Institute of Art and Design (Great Yarmouth). After which I changed direction to do a science degree and have been working in science ever since. Although I changed career path I have kept a strong interest in art and in making my own art. I am a painter and most of my work is with acrylics but I also use other media including oils, marker pen, digital art and collage. Why do I paint? I like being able to produce something beautiful or somehow interesting from nothing. For me painting can often be a slow and painstaking process and the end product nearly always turns out very different from my initial vision. This however, is a big part of the appeal of painting - when a work turns out in a surprising way which also works, this is a fantastic feeling. Even when a painting turns out badly there is usually something about it which I want to expand on or use again in future. I like to change the way I work regularly, although it may be for the viewer to decide if there is still a consistent style in my work. Some of my work is pure invention, some paintings I have reproduced a source image very closely. I have tried a mixture, part realistic reproduction of a reference image and part invention. I have tried other methods for instance, I have experimented using black and white photos and inventing the colour and then going a step further, using a source image to create some initial outlines and then never referring to it again. The latter approaches perhaps an attempt to find what is the right balance between using visual reference material and my own creativity. I am constantly on the lookout for ways to give me something new and hopefully unexpectedly good. There are far too many artists whose work I admire to list them all here but if I was to pick just one it would be David Hockney. He has combined a great skill for creating beautiful art and a need to experiment with new ways of working. This is the kind of balance I would hope to achieve myself. My other influences include book illustrations much of which has very unique styling often emerging completely out of their creators minds. Children’s paintings are also endlessly fascinating.