I was born in Birmingham, England, in 1950, a, ‘black and white’ industrial city whose main employment, at the time, was in the manufacture of the motor car. I studied art in Bourneville and Birmingham art colleges and later at Bournemouth. A keen interest in black and white photography, particularly in darkroom techniques, gradually influenced my painting and graphic studies and techniques- or was it the other way round I wonder? My influences at that time were the so-called ‘pop’ artists, particularly the British contingent- Richard Hamilton, Peter Blake, David Hockney - all of whom used photography as the basis for their paintings. My original brief was a technical one, i.e. to take any photograph and reduce it to solid black and white and then reproduce in paint. My recent paintings are considerably more tonal than my early work.
I have not always painted in black and white. However, in recent years I have returned to the idea, not as a technical exercise, more to do with the subjects, the drama and the atmosphere of the photographs I had collected.
There is something quite ephemeral about most of these latest groups of paintings, all inspired by images from the early 20th century. Most of the subjects were posed and well aware of the camera’s presence and so we have a snapshot of that precise moment in time which I endeavor to capture with my brushes- Shadows of the Past.
I now live in Florida and have received numerous awards at shows throughout the State.