I want the work to speak for itself, but here is some background information.
Art colleges: Walthamstow (East London), and the Royal College of Art (RCA)
I never considered any career other than being a painter, though I earned a living teaching art, briefly in Peckam, then for many years in Hackney, and then for some years in Hastings, East Sussex. Afterwards I taught adult classes for the University of Sussex at the Booth Museum in Brighton. I now do a limited amount of teaching for the University of Birmingham at the Ludlow Museum Resource Centre and occasionally for the Barber Art Institute but otherwise paint full-time.

I became fascinated by natural history as a child and it became a lifelong interest, influencing my work in many ways.

In my childhood it was much easier to find hawk moths and interesting caterpillars in outer London boroughs than it is now. The park behind our house had been turned into allotments during the war (before I was born) and for some time after it had been allowed to go wild. Eventually the respectable municipal flower beds took over again but for some years there were many unofficial temporary nature reserves all over London.
I bred exotic giant silkmoths after discovering that eggs could be bought from dealers, watched tadpoles develop, and made collections of natural history objects.

The RCA Painting School, when I was there, was across the road from the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, and was directly connected to the Victoria & Albert Museum. We had a private entrance into the museum through one of the college corridors which I used most days, eating in the V. and A. cafe and looking at favourite artefacts on the way.
The RCA owned a studio in Paris and I spent 3 months there. I painted the reflections in the Seine and back in London, painted the fountain in the college's greenhouse: water continues to be another recurring theme in my work.

We've moved several times. While living in Hastings, on the South Coast of England, I began painting beaches, particularly at Eastbourne (until the beach defences were renewed with dully uniform breakwaters replacing wonderful weathered ancient beach architecture and, extraordinarily covering chalk fossil rocks under shingle).
In the same period I painted a series of very detailed large landscape/townscape panoramas of Hastings, and two more of a nearby farm. I painted interesting Victorian houses, and was commissioned to produce very large beach scenes for the then new Sea-Life Centre.

One of the large panoramas was purchased for the Hastings Museum and Art Gallery by Hastings Council, with additional funds from the Victoria and Albert Museum.
I painted as well as taught at the Booth Museum in Brighton, at first painting the zoological specimens but then museum specimens of all kinds. Museum artefacts have become another recurring theme.
The themes I've mentioned, there are others, tend to merge. I don't make bounderies between them. It's all painting and the painting is more important than categories or genres. I never wanted to be pigeon-holed as a painter, known for concentrating on just one idea.

I've tended to concentrate on oil painting and water colours, though in the past I've also worked in papier mache ( life-sized ship's figure-heads) and clay. ( I was commisioned to make a ceramic relief for a factory).

I'm married and we have a son and we now live in the Welsh Marches. Since we've been here I've become interested in oil painting on paper, and have found that a noted pioneer, Thomas Jones, 1742-1803, lived nearby.
The diverse work of recent years includes a series of pictures of details and wider interior views of old barns at The Rodd Presteigne, a series of paintings based on the collection at the Ludlow Museum and paintings related to the Welsh landscape.

Since late 2004 and into 2005 I have been engaged on two major projects; a series of four visually complicated portraits involving oriental textiles and a very rich palette which has now led into further figure painting projects, and a series of paintings related to aspects of Kew Gardens to be part of their Artists at Kew exhibition in May-June 2006.

I have always been fascinated by aspects of the natural world, although not the 'nature red in tooth and claw' bit. I have always loved museums and now find inspiration in many of the things to be found there: not just the natural history but the costumes, the machines and artefacts of all kinds. I hope I can still develop.