Hello and Welcome to my site.

Art has been my passion since I was an infant, through my teens, and on. First drawing, then painting in gouache and watercolours and now almost exclusively in oils. Aside from my art, I enjoy running and swimming and long hikes in the countryside, travel, the opportunity to immerse myself in the unexpected joys of foreign sights and culture, and long walks in the countryside.

I live in Bromley, Kent in the UK. I was born here and grew up here. However, my work has allowed me to travel and live abroad for much of my life - in Europe, in the USA and in Asia.

I lived in Japan a while ago now, and memories of that time have remained with me with great clarity. So much so, that I am now striving to express my memories and feelings for that country in my art. In particular I aim to portray life in the countryside where I lived: the rice fields, the water melon patches, the wooded hills, the hidden temples, the ramen shops, the pubs with their red lanterns hanging outside, the festivals, the village shops, the farmer’s trucks and the easy pace of a polite and friendly and delightfully eccentric nation.

My house stood on the outskirts of the small town of Tako Machi in Chiba Prefecture. From my kitchen window I could look down a long valley of rice fields, bordered by low hills of densely packed trees and undergrowth. The living room looked onto a wooded hill with stairs, which led up into its lush darkness. And from my front door a dusty road led straight and true with the Kuriyama Gawa (Chestnut Mountain River) by its side - towards the quiet town centre. The stairs on that shaded hill headed up to Nichihonji Temple - silent and rarely visited. And on a similar hill, not so very far away across the flat expanse of rice fields stood its sister temple - Iidaka Danrin - with its mysteries kept quiet in an island of solitude. It is these two temples which have inspired much of my art in their own secretive ways.

Japan is stifling hot in the humid days of high summer and wet and cold in the winter, interspersed with earthquakes (to remind you where you are in the world) and typhoons, which sweep waves of warm rain down the valleys to blast against fragile walls and squeeze between window frames. And it is August I remember with most fondness - the singing of cicadas in the high spruce trees, the booming of bullfrogs from the fields and the sinister darkness of bamboo forests which skirt the towns and villages. Oh yes…and the outdoor fairs with their stalls selling ‘squid on a stick’ and rice cakes and beer and with their traditional dances, their chatty farmers, happi coats, the smell of soy sauce and sugar.

Animals and the personification of animals and spirits is an important to the Japanese - from Shinto belief through to popular culture - and I will happily populate my paintings with those creatures - always with an eye to the wonderful life I experienced out in the East.