I am a portrait and figure painter, based in Barry, South Wales. My work is held in private collections across the UK and internationally, and represented in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art Cymru. I’m represented by Ffin y Parc Gallery, Llandudno, and Celf Gallery, Cardiff.
Originally from Dartmoor in southwest England, I studied painting at St Martin’s School of Art, London, where I was particularly inspired by working from life, and by paintings and sculpture in the Courtauld Gallery, the British Museum, and other great collections in the city. As a student I spent two summers in Greece and Turkey, researching my thesis on the art and culture of the monastic state Mount Athos, and making studies from classical antiquity. The aesthetics and principles of Classicism remain a key influence and inspiration in my practice.
After graduating from art school in 1992, I moved first to the Czech Republic and then to Italy, teaching English and studying art.
During a year living in Prato, near Florence, I travelled extensively around Tuscany, making studies of pictures and sculpture in galleries, museums, cathedrals and churches across the region. I was also privileged to be able regularly to access the study rooms at the Uffizi, where it was possible to make direct copies of drawings by, among others, Holbein, Bellini and Michelangelo. These experiences continue to inform my work.
Returning to the UK in 1996, I joined several South London life drawing groups, met a number of inspiring painters and models, and returned almost exclusively to drawing and painting from the nude. Establishing myself in a studio in Brixton, I developed my work and ran a regular life drawing sessions for local artists. (I also began working in the homelessness sector at this point, which continued over the following fifteen years).
Moving to South Wales in 2003, I set up a new studio in Barry, and continued to work from the nude for a number of years before also developing a greater interest in portraiture - particularly working with musicians, comedians, and other stage performers.
During this period I worked with several dancers, and found myself exploring a crossover between portraiture and a more gestural, dynamic form of figure painting, bringing together different elements of my earlier practice and influences. With the support of Ballet Cymru, National Dance Company Wales, James Wilton Dance and other companies, these collaborations have been my main focus since around 2016, drawing on the the unique discipline and artistic sensibilities that dancers’ training and experience bring to the creative process.
I enjoy teaching life drawing and portraiture to children and adults in a number of school and community settings, and run a regular portraiture class at Machynlleth Comedy Festival, Powys, for which festival comedians model. These sessions regularly inform my own work, and help me to find clarity in the ways I think about making pictures.
On alternate Sundays I host Sunday Life Drawing at my studio - informal sessions welcoming artists of all levels of experience to work from life.