Born in Hexham, Northumberland in 1967, but spent my childhood years growing up in North Somerset. After moving all over the UK over the years, I have settled back in Bristol where my studio is now located.

About my work

My work is all about the visual impact of colour, shape and texture. There is nothing more exciting than entering a room with a vibrant textural artwork that shouts out “look at me”. I see overwhelming beauty in erosion, corrosion, weathering, patina, and decay, specifically in run-down old buildings around the city, and the decaying structures in nature. I photograph everything and keep a documented record of all my pictures. My influences are very visual, from the contrasts and shapes of the things that surround me. I once stumbled across a fabulous old wall in a rundown area of Bristol, where layer upon layer of years old graffiti was stacked up on top of each other, and over time, the rain, wind and humans had tried to destroy and remove the paint, blending all the colours together. Something magical happened in that process which amounted to a meld of colours and shapes that had become unified. I will always have that moment, and it is those little things that influence what I try to achieve today in my painting. The random beauty of erosion and decay.

Randomness

Chaos, chance and randomness have always had a place in my life which reflects in my work. I approach each painting with very little planning. No colour in mind, no style, zero! I start by unwillingly mixing a colour from the tubes lying around and apply to the canvas in a non-systemic, chaotic approach for the base layer, replicating the elements of the weather and erosion onto the canvas. I continue adding colours, blending them, removing them, layering them, scraping them away (adding/subtracting/multiplying), until something seems to appear out of nowhere. Some elements will remain, and others are removed, then choices seem to appear, but happy accidents sometimes take them away. The picture builds and comes together on its own until all of a sudden you get that feeling of completeness. Each individual painting can take as little as a few hours, or many weeks to complete depending on the state of wet and dry layers that work best to avoid overworking the colours.

Then comes the unavoidable emotion

Of course, emotion in the form of memories and current feelings go into my art. That goes without saying. What I see around me and the memories I have gathered over the years, good and bad, will always be reflected in the work that I produce. The mood of the day goes hand in hand with the art, reflecting in the outcome of each painting. All the drama of my emotional state is reflected in each piece. The work reflects back at you too. The painting process can heavily influence my feeling as I work. As you would expect, you do get deeply involved, drawn into the painting as it progresses, and thoughts go through your mind. It sometimes engulfs you, makes you happy, makes you sad, sometimes angry, sometimes it is completely maddening. On occasion, when you think a piece is finished and you put it aside, you realise the next day that it hasn’t reached your expectations. This can trigger your innermost emotions. But that is all part of the process.

Painting Names

How do you name an abstract painting? I never want to influence my audience in any way if I can help it. Viewing abstract work is very personal. Each observer will see what they want to see, and I like to leave that decision completely up to them. Give a piece a meaningful name, and you narrow down the options for your audience.  I want my audience to focus on the painting itself. Each day you may see something different, something you hadn’t noticed previously. The art changes over time. My names are as abstract as my paintings. I mostly use Markov Chains to generate random words for my paining names.

Artist Influences

As I have already covered, I am heavily influenced by randomness, decay, corrosion, natural patinas from weathering, colour, texture and structure, which is the reason for being drawn towards the great artists like Mark Rothko, Gerhard Richter, Jackson Pollock, ……. But modern-day artists like Jazz Green, Rebecca Crowell, Christian Hetzel, Harry Moody, Stanley Casselman, among many others have been a huge influence on me.

Mediums

Today I work mainly with oil, and oil and cold wax. These mediums are such a pleasure to use. I started painting with acrylic years back but got no-where quick. We just didn’t click. I gave up for a year or so, then finally took the plunge with oil and wax. There was an instant bond. I have tried many different surfaces, from canvas, aluminium, paper, wooden panel, and although I like them all, my preference is a cradled wooden panel as it gives me a smooth, solid surface to work on and is well suited to my preferred medium, methods and technique.

Qualifications:

What makes an artist? Do you need an education in art to qualify? It may help, but from my experience, there are many self-taught artists who do very well without a formal education. I have been an art enthusiast from before I can remember. I have visited many galleries and museums all over the world and I research different artists and their history in my own time out of pure curiosity. It is this curiosity along with experimentation, coupled with my own experience that drives me as an artist. I studied art in my own time over the years. There have been many mishaps, but as you gain experience those mishaps become less and less, you form your own technique and you become to know what works and what doesn’t. Experience is education, knowledge is qualification.

I am self taught.

Artist Statement

Don’t just focus on the obvious. It’s the astonishing little things surrounding it that bind everything together which is just as important, if not more. Many people in their nature tend to follow their peers, but by avoiding adherence to the norm throughout my life I have more often than not found and observed things a little differently.

I try to adapt this concept into my painting. I don’t paint real objects, but the binding space between them. The space that goes unnoticed. The structure and texture of all things.

When observing the things around you, open your mind and drop your defences for a while, and you will find beauty. Accept what you see and appreciate it for what it is. Although you may not understand something initially, don’t just pass it by without giving it a thought. Give it a chance and you may connect.

I have over the years adapted to my own style and technique that has enabled me to open a window or mirror into my past. Like a memory vault, that when I process the paint on the surface, I see faint images in the painting that trigger recognisable elements that stand out, such as significant shapes, structures and colours that behold memories, feelings and emotional content. Each painting will build itself up until it is complete. By layering, scraping and blending the paint over and over on the working surface, the image binds itself together and slowly forms a finished painting. I witness a personal story develop in each painting, which means something to me, but I tend to keep that story to myself. As I have suggested elsewhere, I don’t like to influence the viewer, which in turn allows an individual to interpret the painting for themselves. Seed their mind with something unrelated to them makes the painting meaningless to them personally. It can simply be just one colour or a shape in the overall painting that can connect with the viewer. I don’t expect everyone to connect with each painting on a personal level, but hope they can appreciate it for what it is.

Further Reading:

Chaos Theory

 We have all heard of the Edward Lorenz Butterfly Effect, where an action taken or change in an initial condition in one part of the world can have an impact on an outcome halfway around the world. This is what is commonly known as Chaos Theory. I became interested in how Chaos Theory could be implemented into my paintings. I wanted to paint in a seeming uncontrolled manor, experimenting with colour, shape, and texture, in a way nature intended. Chaos dynamics shows us that disorderly behaviour can act as a creative process. It generates complexity: richly organized patterns, sometimes stable, sometimes unstable. It is this chaos complexity that makes the outcome far more alluring. Chaos breeds life into everything, where Order merely breeds habit, and unfortunately habit becomes repetitive and ordinary.

 Chaos Process

 By applying an initial base layer of colours in an indiscriminate way I am taking an action to start the process. In theory this initial action has already partly determined the future outcome of the next step depending on my following actions, and has essentially contributed to the overall finished piece, and the perception of the audience. It is very difficult to predict the outcome of each action because my mind can’t process all the data involved. I have mental models in memory from many years of experience, but somehow, I never seem to achieve a precise outcome. But that is the whole point. Chaos determines the outcome, as is my intention. I build up the painting by adding more layers, blending colours, scraping elements away, and so on until it finally evolves into something that connects and appeals. There are many other actions to the process that contribute to the overall result. Viscosity of the paint on certain layers, interaction between different paints, addition of mediums, opacity and transparency, seasonal temperatures, gravity, wet & Dry states and time between layers and most importantly, knowing when to stop before the painting goes over the edge. By the time all these elements are thrown into the primordial soup, allowing them all to interact in unpredictable ways through my own methods and techniques, I am very much in the hands of Chaos Theory and the outcome is only then determined by “GOD”. I’m an Atheist btw.

 Random and stochastic behaviour can formulate a variety of interesting colours, textures and structures that suggest semi recognisable features that appear from nowhere, which in turn help provoke an emotional state in the observer.

 Chaos theory describes the qualities of the point at which stability moves to instability, or order moves to disorder, and focuses on the elements that don’t quite fit within a system in an orderly, logical way. I endeavor to find that place between order and chaos, on the brink of disorder and instability. It’s the place that connects all things. It’s the process that determines the outcome of everything. Everything is built upon chaos theory. You see it everywhere around us in nature, and it spans to the far depths of the universe and beyond.

 From starting a process to presenting my finished painting to an audience ultimately has that same Butterfly Effect. I intend to impact on my audience in a way that will show that beautiful art can be produced by a random chaotic process, which in turn will connect with the outside world and influence their perspective of abstract art made in an unconventional none determined way.

 Why?

 I am dyslexic and have had difficulty processing information from a very young age. It was a revelation to find out at the age of 30 that this may have been the reason. I’m guessing because of the dyslexia I gained an edge in all things creative. But I processed things a little differently than most and have always been drawn to abstract music, art, and sculpture. I tend to visualise images and patterns in surfaces that others may not see so easy. The condition is called apophenia. We all have it to a degree. It seems to help me with my creative process. Random chaotic abstract painting resonates with me, and I hope it does with you. It is something that I can do that doesn’t confuse me and the outcome seems to please others.