I spent the first ten years of my life at Rockingham Castle in Northamptonshire which belonged to my uncle. As a child I found the works of Stanley Spencer, Paul Nash, Augustus John and many other artists from the 1930s and 1940s hanging on the panelled walls. My uncle arranged for me to study under John Christoforou and Norman Adams.

While my uncle wanted me to be an artist, my father, a retired naval officer, took a different view and I was obliged to pursue a professional career as a teenager in the British steel industry by undertaking a five-year engineering apprenticeship.

Art remained a hobby for the first part of my professional life. I started with a blue period, painting at night on enrolment at the Ebbw Vale steelworks in 1958 and was astonished to win the Vice Chancellor’s art prize at the University of Southampton with a red abstract work a few years later.

 I thought about becoming an artist again with a spell of painting in Paris when leaving the steel industry to become a management consultant. This consultancy career path led to seven years in the US, the first two of which were spent at the Wharton School of Finance and the next five working for investments banks on Wall Street. Art was a constant throughout this period and following my return to the UK in 1974 when I married my wife. Art finally became my career on recovering my health at the beginning of the 2000s.

Art student days
As I was now unemployed, my children gave me gift cards for the Open Studio at the Heatherley School of Fine Art in Chelsea, which enabled my wife to explain to her friends that I was drawing naked ladies.

This was followed by a spell at the Kensington & Chelsea College where I obtained a starred distinction for digital work before going on to study at the Camberwell College of Arts. Here I graduated with a BA in painting and with a masters degree in fine art digital in 2017. My work Double Crossed was shown at Hoxton Town Hall and Shock and Awe at the College.  Celebratory prints of Lancelot “Capability” Brown’s works were exhibited at St Mary’s Church in Barnes to mark the tercentenary of his birth in 1716 as part of my MA work.

Influences
I have been influenced by many artists and particularly those that mixed photography and painting like Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol and David Hockney. I experimented with many media ranging from sculpture and fashion to water colours, oils, acrylics and digital processes.  My work has sold and been shown in many venues.

Current work
Since advancing years constrain my mobility, I find myself obliged to work as a digital artist.  From my studio at home in Barnes, I create surreal montages that have a playful and entertaining effect while striking a more sombre note at other times.

I also like to take on unusual art projects such as the Friesen Collection where a friend of a friend, Baroness Dorothy Friesen, became entranced by the mysterious images that emerged from the effect of water on analogue film after rescuing her albums from a flooded watermill in Mallorca a year ago. My friend showed them to me, and I was sufficiently intrigued to process them into framed prints. The prints show watercolours, unique in vibrancy and luminosity, transcending to abstraction from the reality of the original photographs.