After growing up in Yorkshire and East Anglia, I found myself in London, still, in many ways, an old-fashioned sort of place, full of gas fires and small shops. But I was at art school, which was a good vantage point to look at the world as it was tilting towards the future.
I went slip-sliding to America, already a land of central heating and big fridges, hardly a country, more a continent. It seemed to contain a small number of avant -garde artists and large number of traditional university art departments, one of which I spent two years in.
Later, I returned to North America, to Canada, to that large alternative community which was downtown Toronto and was there while the Toronto art scene itself was growing and developing. I bought time in the studio by working as a cab driver, as a scenic artist in the movies and by teaching.
I came back to England in 1988, during the waning years of Margaret Thatcher, to A.S. Neill’s Summerhill School, another intensely alternative place, to be the art teacher there for nine years. From there to Norwich, a city in the east of England, where I worked in a prison one day a week, facilitating art with groups of men and re-focusing on my own work.
I live in Berwick-upon-Tweed, in the north-east of England, close to the Scottish border, with my wife and two children.
1948
Born Yorkshire England
1968-72
Hornsey College of Art, London, England. BA
1972-74
Temple University, Philadelphia, USA. MFA
1980-81
Taxi driver, Toronto, Canada (intermittent)
1984-88
University of Toronto, Lecturer in Fine Art (part time)
1988-97
Summerhill School, Suffolk, England, art teacher (full time)
1998-03
H.M. Prison Blundeston, Suffolk, art facilitator (part time)
Solo Exhibitions
2004
King of Hearts Gallery, Norwich, England; Digital Photography
1997
Lowestoft College Gallery, Suffolk; Paintings
1987
Temiskaming Art Gallery, Hailebury, Ontario, Canada; Paintings
1986
Garnet Press, Toronto; Paintings
1984
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; traveling exhibition, Paintings
1983
Gallery Quan, Toronto; Paintings
1982
Funnel Gallery, Toronto; Paintings
Group Exhibitions (selected)
2007
Gymnasium Gallery, Berwick-upon-Tweed; Open Exhibition
1999
Kettles Yard, Cambridge, England; Kettles Yard Open
1990
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk; Drawings for All
1987
Centennial Gallery, Oakville, Toronto; Nature, Garden, Seed
1986
Garnet Press, Toronto; Small Works
1984
Edmonton Art Gallery, Alberta, Canada; New Representational Art
Gallery 101, Ottawa; Desire
1983
Gallery Quan, Toronto; Figures Drawn from a Group
1982
Chromazone, Toronto; Small Works