about the artist
I was born in Manchester, UK in1950. My father was from the UK and mother from Augusta, GA.
In 1967, my family left England and resettled in Georgia after my father got polio. I attended Georgia State University and graduated with a degree in design. I married and had two daughters. Initially employed as a commercial artist in design and illustration, oil painting began as sporadic exploration. My earliest landscape sales began in 1985 working with a book publisher producing paintings of Georgia.
Between 1987 and 1990, while living in a downtown studio off Peachtree Street, I began capturing city images of Atlanta. My city theme eventually evolved into a group exhibition titled “Atlanta: A City Portrait.”
My early years in London had left city impressions I wanted to relive in the United States so New York became my new objective. In 1991, I relocated just north of Princeton, to the small village of Kingston. There, I rented a studio space where I would spend the next thirty years creating over two hundred city paintings to make up my artist’s narrative of New York. Of course, at the same time, I produced hundreds of painterly landscapes while also freelancing in design.
I wouldn’t describe myself as a photo realist since such highly defined detail never seemed to be a magic ingredient that satisfied me. It was more about capturing city light, color schemes, atmospherics or motion. It was also about people and places I’d want to witness. My objective was to be “real” from an artist’s creative observation and reflect with characterizing brushwork, an artist’s real signature. When I was photo inclined, I produced black and white images with a camera though on limited occasions. I even painted some work using “black and white” oils.
For several years, I made trips to Gloucester, MA where I joined and would show my work at the North Shore Arts Association. My work became available through auction houses including Rago Arts and Auction in Lambertville, NJ and Shannon’s Auctions in Milford, CT.
In 2021, Covid 19 had a crippling effect financially. Along with gallery closures, my seventieth birthday brought on a reality, I had to think about returning south, to Charlotte, NC, to have more opportunity to visit my daughters in Atlanta. I closed my Princeton studio and moved to Lake Norman where I would finally assemble an online presentation of some of my work.