About

I live and work in northern France. I am passionate about painting and carving and also about contributing to the rich tradition of artisan crafts particularly stonemasonry and historic building conservation.

I have a background in Fine Art, I added a degree in Philosophy and a post- graduate diploma in Art Psychotherapy. I’m not interested in academia, these were just avenues that drew my attention as I tried to pursue a creative life.

I spent quite a few years working in Adult Mental Health as a Senior Art Therapist for the NHS and in forensic settings and residential units for other organisations. But I missed the creative side of things, so I made a leap of faith and set out as a kind of ‘artist for hire’, running creative classes in schools and community settings, I supplemented this as a ‘handyman’ doing everything from fitting kitchens, gardening and the like around South Yorkshire in my battered pickup truck.

A series of public sculpture commissions allowed me some degree of creative freedom and more consistent income. This ebb and flow of making art or earning a living was, and still is, a constant hurdle. Chasing government arts funding was an option, but inevitably meant ticking ideological boxes, not my path. Selling art privately as a ‘product’ or selling my creative skills as a ‘service’, sits better. Markets are never ‘free’, but there is freedom in the choice to participate.

After a lull in commissions following the 2008 bank-led downturn and other life events, I funded training at the City & Guilds of London Art school on their ‘Historic Stone Carving’ course. I later gained on-site training as a Heritage Stonemason on Lincoln Castle and Lincoln Cathedral. I’ve since worked up and down the UK as a mason.

This was rewarding, but like the Art Therapy journey, it was leading me to an alternative profession, related to, but not directly involved with, ‘art making’, my real passion.

So I thought I’d shake things up a bit and moved to France. I reckoned I could use my masonry skills to rebuild the abandoned wreck that would be my (our) house and most importantly I had workshop and studio space.

I wasn’t alone in this venture, Laura and my dog Mazy, share this new life with me, I’m very lucky.

I now juggle my time restoring my house, other peoples houses and the odd chateau. My creative drive hasn’t diminished and I hope to finally spend more time pursuing this life-long obsession with art making.