As an artist I view change as a positive creative force and each change in my life has influenced my art. The five years I spent in Australia with my wife brought many changes including a family, Australia’s unique natural environment brought a renewed interest in landscape painting.

Since my return to Scotland in 2006 I have found new inspiration in my surroundings and I continued to build on the developments in my painting started in Australia. My work focuses on landscape and the river Endrick as well as the flowers in my garden. I live in Balfron near Loch Lomond National Park, Scotland with my wife, two children and one dog.

I am influenced by art of the past, the distant past, the not so distant twentieth century modernism and contemporary art. The ideas that drive artists to create have changed, the need to make art has not. Modernism showed that anything can be art, the theme of my art is the natural environment around me. I am drawn to look at and to make art that is painterly although I appreciate a broad spectrum of approaches, of ways of interpreting. Frank Stella the American abstractionist has said that he likes art that is real, that can convince you that it’s present or authentic, not as an illusionistic representation but in its presence. I would say that I identify with this idea although it is hard to define and aspire to make art with such qualities.

I studied at Glasgow School of Art followed by post graduate studies in New York and worked in film and TV set design for 17 years whilst continuing to develop my painting when time allowed.


I started teaching in 2008, in 2010 my wife and I started art4you Scotland an arts centre offering art classes, workshops and regular exhibitions.