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I was born in Huddersfield,Yorkshire in 1938;grew up in Barnsley and attended Leeds University where I obtained a BSc degree.I worked as a teacher of Biology from 1960-2003 at schools in the UK,Tanzania,Kenya,Cayman Islands,Spain,Zimbabwe and latterly in Malawi. I am a self-taught as an artist and have exhibited consistently since the 1960s - having one-man shows in Yorkshire, Edinburgh, London (Commonwealth Institute), Barcelona, Nairobi, Harare, Washington(USA),Blantyre (Malawi). My work has also represented Zimbabwe in regional exhibitions in Zambia and Botswana and in one pan-African exhibition in Senegal.
My paintings can be found in various countries world-wide,including Australia ,USA,South Africa,New Zealand,Ireland,Canada,Spain as well as Ghana and most East African countries. * For many years my work has related to the contemporary African social situation as I have seen and experienced it during the 20 years I have spent in that incredible continent.As a result my work can be read on one level as documentary but the underlying stimulus for my work has always been the amazing paradox of beauty and suffering ;the two sides of the African coin. * Picture painting is well outside the African tradition generally speaking and with a few exeptions has failed to reflect the post-colonial era unlike music,literature,drama,and poetry.So as a European and a painter I have a sense of being an uninhibited onlooker,totally intoxicated by the visual ,and by involvement ,fully aware of the stresses,poverty,deprivation and sheer desperation which exists so widely. |