I was born in West Yorkshire and, apart from seven years spent working in Buckinghamshire after I left college, have lived and worked in Yorkshire all my life. My home has been in various parts of the county ranging from the wild, rugged moors above Halifax and Holmfirth to the softer beauty of the Yorkshire Wolds and coastal areas of the East Riding where I currently live. Yorkshire certainly has a great variety of beautiful and impressive landscapes and coastal areas, villages and townscapes, gritty industrial architecture, bleak moors and brooding hills, rolling farmland, river valleys and woodland. There is certainly plenty of material here to keep an artist occupied for a lifetime.

From childhood I always had a great interest in the natural world and spent a great deal of time outdoors, walking, birdwatching, learning to identify different species of bird, trees and flowers and as part of this interest I soon wanted to draw and paint these things. This really was the beginning of my love painting (and nature).

Although I still watch birds (and paint them occasionally) my main subject areas are landscapes and seascapes (sometimes townscapes) often focusing on scenes from Yorkshire but also from other parts of the British Isles that I visit too.

I have a great interest in the effects of light in creating mood, tone and atmosphere in a painting. The sky is obviously a great source of this and the interplay of light on clouds, sea and land is at the heart of many of my paintings.  Much of my work is done in oil, but I also work in watercolour, acrylics and occasionally gouache. I enjoy exploring the different effects that can be achieved by different media.