I set out to be an artist in the early 1970's. Art had been my main interest at both preparatory school in Solihull and at Oundle School in Northamptonshire. I still have certificates from the Royal Drawing Society for Passes in 1954, 1957 and 1958, and Passes withHonours for 1956 and 1959.
I attended Birmingham Art School, Margaret Street, for a short spell studying Technical Illustration in 1964, my attendance unfortunately being terminated by a serious car accident as a passenger. But what I learned in that short space of time, principally 'vanishing point' and 'horizon line', became a valuable asset. Also, I spent a great deal of time viewing historic paintings at Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, and was greatly inspired by the work of the Pre-Raphaelites and the landscapes of David Cox.
In the late 1960's and early 1970's I shared a house on Packington Park with four contemporaries and was fortunate enough to have a studio there, with sufficient space to develop my watercolour technique. From that address I exhibited and sold works at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists and with the New English Art Club. As a result, I was commissioned by Christina Foyle to create a book-jacket for one of her publications.
By means of an inheritance and an insurance pay-out for injuries received in my accident, I purchased a cottage with an attached barn in Little Compton, Cotswolds in 1972. I completed renovations and created a studio in 1974 and submitted my first painting from that address to the Royal Academy in the spring of 1975. It was a huge boost to my confidence when Surveying the Woodshed, Little Compton was selected for the RA Summer Exhibition of that year, made the hanging and was sold. This was followed by my painting At the Back of Little Compton in 1976, which was also selected by the RA, but not hung.
From the early 1970's I had been buying and selling 19th and early 20th Century paintings to subsidise my developing art practice, with the intention of exhibiting these and developing a broader market for art sales. Consequently I opened a one-roomed gallery in the old barber's shop in Church Street, Stow-on-the-Wold in May 1977.
This proved successful, and I expanded the gallery on four occasions over the next 25-30 years. However, somewhat sadly, the fascination of the art dealing world - the availability of wonderful paintings, the characters within the trade, the travel, the exciting process of presenting work, the delight of restoration and framing, the staging of exhibitions - all brought my own art practice to a halt.
Having sold the cottage at Little Compton in the 1980's I did take another studio in the 1990's to pursue painting inspired by the music I love (being classical, from Rameau to Peteris Vasks for example), but whilst I expanded my knowledge of music, I was never happy with that body of work. A move for the gallery from Stow to Moreton in Marsh came in 2007, but it was lock-down in 2020 that kickstarted my painting again.
We had an exhibition opening planned for Saturday March 24th 2020, but lock-down was announced to begin immediately on Friday 23rd. Aware of its likelihood, I had come into the gallery on the preceding Monday to hang the show, thinking 'well, what is the point, no one is going to come and view the exhibition' but I found myself hanging it as per normal.
I ordered a video camera and tracking dolly on-line, set it all up to shoot the whole exhibition in situ so people could view it on their PC or laptop. Sadly, this simply didn't work. I couldn't prevent reflections interfering with the footage, since two of the artists' works were glazed. So, I sent all the kit back. Clients phoned about the exhibits anyway, so I took the paintings out to show in people's homes, leaving them at a safe distance in people's front hallways.
However, with no one coming to the gallery for the first time in a long time, I was free to go out and draw. The first location I thought of was just outside Moreton-in-Marsh, at Lemington Lakes fishing grounds. I have been drawing and painting consistently, part time, ever since.
I have dubbed my style High Naturalism.
My practice has always been to choose my subject and then go and sit at the location to complete a working drawing. I used to make notes on the drawing itself, about colour and details, but now I use my mobile phone camera to take images for reference. My technique (often described as pointillism by people who have viewed my work, with one observer coining the phrase 'Seurat on speed') is very time consuming, but it is just the manner that I am driven to pursue.
I love working in the countryside, in the fields that make up the local landscape that I know and understand, and I hope to keep taking this work further. There are so many subjects out there to tackle. I would also like to produce work inspired by Klimt's woodland scenes which I feel are sublime.