I was born in Birmingham in 1964 and come from a working class background. My father was an electrician and mother a secretary. I have a brother who is just a year older than myself.

From a very early age I loved drawing and painting, whilst my brother and friends were out playing football,
I was always at the kitchen table covered in paint and crayon.

I attended the local primary where I often won various painting competitions. Several years later I finished comprehensive school with top grades in art, finishing first in my year with my coursework. One of my paintings of a Tigers face still hangs in the main corridor today.

After leaving school in 1980 I started work at a leading sign manufacturers where I trained as an engraver and screen printer, then eventually became an apprentice sign writer. This became my full-time occupation, excelling in all areas of the craft, which included pub signs, vehicle livery, canal barges, gilding and glass gilding.

After many years travelling all over the UK and living and working in Devon, the bottom dropped out of the sign writing market due to computerisation.

It was in the early 1990’s when my career took a different path. I moved back to Birmingham and teamed up with an interior design company where I became a specialist paint finisher and muralist. This took me all over the world including plenty of work in London, Portugal, Spain and Japan. I have worked for the rich and famous, including rock stars and footballers. The work I did varied from specialist paint techniques (marbling, wood graining etc.) through to painting murals, and very many canvases (contemporary, abstract, even painting pictures of the family dog.)

History & Background