Artist's Statement

The wildlife, skies and landscapes of Sussex and my tiny Brighton garden inspire me. The charming cheeky, characterful birds who are regular visitors to my garden have enchanted me and feature regularly in my work.

My paintings and prints are very popular and have been featured in Sussex Life and Brighton and Hove Life magazines, as has my well known Artist's Open House 'The Trojan House'.

Animals with 'attitude' catch my eye. My free and expressive use of paint captures the character of the animals. I contrast bold expressive brush strokes with fine intricate detail to bring the animals to life and create texture and movement in their worlds.

Echoes of the art and exotic creatures I encountered in West Africa and the Bahamas enrich my work and are especially strong in my fish paintings and etchings.

All my life I have lived by the sea, be it the Gold Coast of West Africa, the crystal clear waters of the Bahamas, the golden beaches of Jamaica, the East Coast of the US or the pebble beach at Brighton...so it's no surprise beautiful atmospheric seascapes feature in my work.

As both a Fine Artist & a Printmaker, I blur the boundaries between painting and printmaking, mixing media within each image, often adding collage, watercolour, acrylic, and pen & ink to my etchings, collagraphs and linocuts. The influence of each medium plays an important part in determining the character of the final piece.

My etchings are created using nitric acid to burn the images into metal plates which are then hand inked. I enjoy experimenting with colour and techniques within each etching Edition. I always print my etching editions myself on a traditional press.

Images for my Collagraph prints are built up by creating collages of texture from a variety of objects ranging from rare lace to vintage wallpaper. I seal them on cardboard 'plates' using shellac, hand ink and print them on a traditional printmaking press using specialist paper.

I contrast my traditional printmaking (which uses techniques essentially the same as those used by Rembrandt) with cutting edge digital creative techniques. My very successful series of moon images, including 'Many Moons', 'Blue Moon' and 'Full Moon' are created using the latest digital art technology.