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I have always had the urge to draw. I was encouraged as a child and fortunate enough to be provided with plenty of drawing materials.

I continued to draw and paint at school, passing Art and Engineering drawing A levels. After a Foundation Course I followed on to a Technical Illustration HND. The course, in the early eighties, had a wide ranging skills-based approach which included analytical drawing and life drawing sessions alongside the more technical disciplines.

On completion I worked as a designer/illustrator for an advertising agency and was employed as a part time lecturer in analytical drawing and later as a life drawing tutor on the Foundation course. I completed both FETC and PGCE teaching qualifications.

I then re-trained as a Graphic Designer gaining my BA (Hons) in 1997 and have been running my own design company since then. In 2011 I returned to education to complete an MA in Visual Communication

During the frustrating periods when the weather is too poor to go outside to paint, I sometimes turn to still life. My latest batch of work is a series of larger than life conker paintings.

ABOUT CONKERS

The humble Horse Chestnut holds many a memory for me in its warm, reflective surface. Redolent of school days, they are lumped in with drizzle, bonfires and the cordite tang of sparklers in my mind's Autumnal reference library.

As children we collected and treated them to a variety of experimental processes to try and produce a champion conker. They would be baked and pickled, polished and hammered to try to gain an advantage over other boys' efforts.

When sufficiently hardened, we would drill and thread them onto an old bootlace ready to be swung with as much force as possible at an opponent's dangling prize.

My knuckles still throb at the memory of the ones that missed.