You often find here a personal statement. So here's a brief one: I have done lots of things, some of them have been quite good (but not all of them) (with apologies to Eddie Izzard).

First some bio notes:

I've exhibited over the last 20 years, mostly in Cornwall, but prefer not to include a tedious CV which no-one is really interested in.

Paintings are for sale. I try to keep prices down to a reasonable level - mostly between £500 and £1500 (GBP). Studies and old work are available at very low prices. If collectors, artists and galleries want to see work not exhibited here, please just ask. Images can be seen as e-mail attachments in the first instance.

I have three basic beliefs...

1. Art is the highest level to which the human spirit aspires,
2. It stands the best chance of explaining the deep mysteries of life,
3. Which it is our purpose and joy to explore and understand.

My paintings respond to Nature. They are about:
Art (Subjectivity),
Science (Objectivity), and
The mysterious eternal triangle of Man, Woman and Nature (= Landscape and Figure)

Perhaps 'Visual poetry' best sums painting up for me.

Background

I was born in Exeter, Devon, England, and currently live in an isolated wooded valley in North Devon within sight of Exmoor where I am building a new studio. My paintings are conceived in the natural world - amongst rocks and living things. They grow in the margins where Civilisation meets Nature, where Nature meets Man, and where Man meets Woman.

As a child, I guessed that Man corrupted Nature. He wrestled her to his own ends - be it farm, garden, dog, horse etc. Later I noticed he did it to the human body too: imposing his will - moulding, adapting, shaping. So, as a lonely child, and later as an intellectually remote adult, I was at peace with Nature in the Raw. Intuitively I felt I understood. The countryside was a safe retreat and remains so.

Fine art and wild nature are conflicting passions. Conflicting because it's about survival of the natural world but also personal integrity and sanity: one endangers the other.

I first worked for a newspaper, then from the age of 19 with wildlife. I wrote and illustrated some books and more than 100 articles. Later, I gained a doctorate at Glasgow University but became disillusioned with formal science though I still do some conservation work. Seeing that only through Natural Philosophy could the planet be saved, I qualified as a teacher but hated the lack of independence for teachers in Britain.

A friend told me I was unemployable. So I gave up and concentrated on the most fundamental form of communication available to humans...

The Visual...

Merging ideas to produce a dialogue between OBJECT and SUBJECT.
An image might emerge that 'speaks' it. Painting, as old as civilisation, changes the world into an international language. Artists take the world and reconstruct it to a different shape. In short, painting visualises ideas.

Current work - Shaping Figure & Landscape

Still besotted by the natural world and by the way we fit into it: the human impact. My landscapes and 'figurescapes' are responses to Nature but I never forget that Jackson Pollock once said that "One is landscape". The human figure is elemental: contrasts, contours, tensions, boundaries, patterns, colours, balances and harmonies. A landscape feature which translates into a Painting or fails.

As a heterosexual male, I must concentrate on the female 'figure'. She can become the Landscape. Her metaphysical position is astride the world. Pictorially, a union happens which works on infinite levels. Infinite because each viewer brings his or her own baggage which produces its own psychological response. Intellectually I feel my job is to challenge, upset and question. Emotionally, to inspire, engage and ultimately, uplift.

Whatever ambition or arrogance drives humans, we are as much a natural creation as anything else. To our own immense risk, we pretend to be something else. The world is now shaped by man. And we shape ourselves or allow ourselves to be shaped. I try to look at the visual phenomenon of a human being as though it were a tree or rock, intrigued by the way we try to alter natural phenomena and impose our will upon it.

You will have noticed that the human body is seldom 'automatically' nude. It is usually constrained by layers of clothing, pinned, underpinned, modified and enhanced. A sea of hypocrisy surrounds the 'Classic Nude' - often a response to male desire or disguised pornography. I want to confront this head-on. Just like a landscape or garden, we find some more interesting and attractive than others.

Speaking as a 'handler of paint', communicating through the medium of a computer destroys the 'gesture'. Surface quality and texture are vital; no quality of digital reproduction compensates. So please remember that these are merely introductions. Successful paintings are stepping stones towards understanding. Unsuccessful ones are strangled at birth or die of neglect.

Finally, Fine Art breathes or dies. Like music, it does not rely on vicarious similarity to something else. Better understood intuitively - emotion not machine. Whether the pictures speak to you, even as digitised reproductions, I cannot say, but hope you feel they warrant some contemplation. All thoughts are welcome - most of all on the pictures themselves. Thanks for coming this far at least.