I like to say that I am “an Englishman by birth and a Celt by nature”

I was born in the town of Bacup, (Bay-cup) Lancashire.  It is a small municipality situated on the border between Lancashire and Yorkshire in the Southern Pennines, a range of hills also known as “the backbone of England”. The main industries in the area were the dyeing and printing of cotton and shoe manufacture. Coal was both the the main source of heat and the fuel which drove the factories and so the atmosphere was consistently smokey and the river changed colour at regular intervals depending on the needs of the dyeworks.

It might sound grim but it wasn’t.  Less than half a mile from the centre of town the hills rose all around and I took advantage of this, walking for long hours amid the dry stone walls which marked the farmer’s fields.

Art has always been important to me.  Even as a small boy I was the one on the playground drawing pictures.  I studied art through my school and college days graduating with a B.A. from Loughborough College of Art and Design and an Art Teaching Diploma From Leicester University.  After college I began a teaching career which would last sixteen years ending with an appointment as pottery/art master and theatrical designer at James Allen’s Girls’ School, a highly respected private school located in Dulwich, London.  During my six years at the school I was accepted as a Fulbright exchange teacher and spent a year in a South Carolina High School where I was also asked to participate as an artist-in-residence at Clemson University.  Since immigrating to the U.S. in 1990 I have been fortunate to be able to focus my endeavors on pursuing my personal development as a three dimensional artist.

My work is centered around the themes of journeys and growth.  I use both literal and metaphorical interpretations to create my sculptures, sometimes alluding to more than one definition in single piece.

 

The passage of time, a concept difficult to express in a static object, is also something which I try to incorporate into my compositions.  So that a spiral or a labyrinth is used as a symbol of time advancing and each interlacing of a celtic knot might be used to show the journey of life to be a series of problems to be overcome.  As in Celtic lore nothing is as it seems and everything is interconnected.

I have exhibited work in many different venues, some small and some national, some near and some far, some challenging and some wonderful, some with prizes awarded and some not.  Additionally my work can be found in many private collections throughout North America and Europe.