‘I have been painting and exhibiting continuously since graduation from Medway College of Art in 1973. It is my life, and my living. Growing up in Dartford, I would take my dog with me and explore the Thames valley, spending days sketching and painting, regardless of weather or time. Late in the evening a driftwood fire somewhere out on the Thames marshes in the 1970’s might have located me, drawing until it was too dark to see. Art has been an obsession for me since about the age of fourteen; as a schoolboy I knew that my destiny was to be a painter. Later, with the encouragement of my tutor and mentor, Ted Draper (Vice Principal, Ravensbourne College of Art), I began my career as a full-time artist. The pressure of painting and exhibiting is constant, especially as my work is finely crafted and time-consuming, but it urges me on to experiment and develop my favourite themes. When I think I’ve exhausted all my creative energies, I have only to walk out and look at the extraordinary effects of light and atmosphere which transform how we see and feel, and the ideas just keep coming.’