I am a 60 year-old man who only recently made the mental shift from practicing, to be an artist. I’m a late emerger!

Nature has always been the only peaceful, spiritual place for me. It gives me a sense of continuity, perspective and a time frame that shows complete indifference to me. Yet I feel part of it – a tiny cog in the giant machine. I belong! My experience of life weaves into this and that’s where my art comes from.

I studied Fine Art at Canterbury College of Art in the early 80s where I spent my time in the surrounding countryside painting and drawing.

I have been involved in set design and construction for the last 40 years. I produce drawings for sets in the theatre, opera and musical worlds. I carry out venue surveys. I compile drawings for large scale tours. I use a computer to draw for this and the physical sensations involved in smearing charcoal over paper is a joyous antidote to the rigours of geometry.

I use charcoal, pencil & soft pastels on paper, both outdoors & in the studio. I like the simplicity of using charcoal, an eraser and paper as my tools and they suit my fluid style. I enjoy looking and drawing in equal measure. In a statement to the Royal Committee into Drawing of 1857, John Ruskin said (of his Working Men’s College drawing classes)‘ My efforts are directed not to making a carpenter an artist, but to making him happier as a carpenter.’

I embrace the figurative tradition. I start by choosing ingredients that appeal to me: materials, subject matter, a viewpoint, light. Then I work on formal aspects of the drawing – composition, tone, line. I try not to think about the result – over-analysis creates a level of self-awareness which corrodes the natural flow and prevents things developing in a less conscious way. Meanwhile, on the periphery of this conventional process, I reveal things about myself that insinuate themselves into the picture. The result is both formal and unexpected.

My approach is quite simple – to be sensitive and receptive to things that appeal to me. Particular locations, extreme contrasts, specific symbols (how do I draw THIS tree – not any tree but this one), combining subjects from what’s in front of me and from my past. It becomes a voyage of discovery during which, the more I work, the more I learn about myself and my relationship to the world around me.

Hard work matters – to produce results that are a development of my direct interaction with my subject. This means I’m not using off-the-peg solutions and have to work out an answer that’s appropriate to this challenge.

Rembrandt said ‘Choose only one master, Nature’, and I’m happy to follow that advice.

Jeanette Winterson:
‘Since human beings began their journey towards consciousness, we have sought a relationship with the invisible. Some call it God, some call it enlightenment, some call it hocus-pocus. Jung, much read by Hepworth, said it hardly matters whether or not God exists, what matters is that human beings are interested in God – that we seem to have a spiritual gene that leans us towards more than the material world. Richard Dawkins thinks this is a tragedy of superstition. I think it is the triumph of life.
How we name the invisible is unimportant. It is important that we sense it, that we seek it out in art, and that art continues to find it for us.’

John Constable:
`The sound of water escaping from mill dams, willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts and brickwork, I love such things. These scenes made me a painter.’