I do not call myself an 'artist'. That is an accolade to be awarded by others. I am just a humble painter and so feel I should first apologise for the amount of words on the site of a painter. But as a writer too, I'm intrigued by ideas carried by words and console myself with the thought that those interested will read them. So if you don't want go further let's finish with 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, which…
3. .… it is our purpose and joy to explore and understand.

Paintings, in short, respond to Nature; for me, they concern: Art (Subjectivity), Science (Objectivity) and the mysterious eternal triangle: Man, Woman, Nature (Landscape and Figure).  'Visual Poetry' perhaps best sums it up.

The Visual…

Painting is older than civilisation and international. When you pick up a brush with pigment on it and lay it on a surface, you are doing something our prehistoric ancestors did – no different. Artists reconstruct the world to a different shape and visualise ideas creating a dialogue between Object and Subject. One of my heroes is Chaim Soutine, and Christopher Neve writing many years ago described his work as "Pigment and idea stirred up together." Painting demands an intimate knowledge of Subject.

Conceived in the natural world - among rocks and living things - my paintings grow in the margins: where Civilisation meets Nature, where Nature meets Man, and where Man meets Woman. This is where grew my interest in the sexual energy of landscape and its coexistence with, and sometimes equivalence to, the human form. Resulting paintings are 'Figurescapes' or 'Forbidden landscapes' (see A Note on the Paintings).

Personal background

I was born in Exeter and brought up in North Wales amongst the limestone hills which have remained my favourite landscape. After prep school here I was sent to a boarding school in Southport, Lancashire, which I hated, and where I was told I couldn't draw. The opinion was reinforced here that I was nothing more than an idiot.

So my training in art was strange. My older brother, John Martin, guided me (and still does to some extent): taking me to exhibitions and explaining theory and history. The die was cast and then I had my huge stroke of luck. I went to work for my boyhood hero, Peter Scott - the famous naturalist, wildlife painter and founder of the World Wildlife Fund. A career in wildlife conservation followed, specialising in breeding rare and endangered species, inspired by Gerald Durrell; low wages complemented with writing and illustrating books (yes, drawing, that I was told I couldn't do!): 12 books in all and >100 articles, mostly under my assumed family name Martin – but that's another (long) story.

Work in ethology (animal behaviour) was inspired by luminaries like Niko Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz. The intimate bond between animal and environment and the myriad of inter-connections informed my love of landscape. Maturing emotional responses fuelled an intense passion for Fine Art and this slowly came to overtake mere 'illustration'. It is the wellspring of my life.

Even as a child, I suspected that Man corrupted Nature: wrestling Her to his own ends - be it farm, garden, dog, horse etc. Then I noticed he did this to the human body too: imposing his will - moulding, adapting, shaping. So, as a lonely child and later an intellectually remote adult (never a member of a club or in a social group of like-minded souls), I was always at peace with nature in the raw – the wilderness.

The countryside was a safe retreat and remains so. But in a sense, fine art and wild nature are conflicting passions. Conflicting because one is about survival of the natural world and the other about one's own personal integrity and sanity for I found that worry about one endangered the other!

After spending 5 years researching the ecology of Britain's rarest crow, the Chough, in West Wales (to inform a return to its native Cornish cliffs), and gaining a PhD from Glasgow University I became disillusioned with the politics in modern science, so qualified as a teacher and found the politics equally numbing.

Gravitating back to the West Country, first Cornwall and now Devon, I live and work and occasionally teach drawing and painting in a quiet valley in the rural north, not far from Exmoor.

Current work - Shaping Figure & Landscape

Whatever ambition or arrogance drives humans we are as much a natural creation as anything else. It is at our peril we pretend otherwise. 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 just as I would a tree or rock – as "an object interrupting light" (as Henry Israel taught me). Thereafter I'm intrigued by the psychological response and the way we try to alter natural phenomena and impose our will upon it.

You have noticed that the human body is seldom nude; usually it is covered or constrained by layers of clothing: pinned, underpinned, modified and enhanced. Lingerie was once sturdy 'foundation'! A sea of hypocrisy surrounds the 'Classic Nude' – often a response to male desire or disguised pornography - and I want to confront this head-on. Just like a landscape or garden, some humans we find more interesting and attractive than others. Now how and why should that be?

So still besotted by the natural world and the way we fit into it (the human impact), my Figurescapes are responses to Nature and, as Jackson Pollock once said, "One is landscape". So, the human figure, like a rock, is elemental: a jumble of contrasts, contours, tensions, boundaries, patterns, colours, balances and harmonies. As a heterosexual male, there is no choice but to concentrate on the female form. She becomes Landscape, Her metaphysical position astride the world. Pictorially, a union happens when it works on infinite levels. 'Infinite' because each viewer carries his or her own personal baggage of psychological responses. Intellectually I feel my job is to challenge, upset and question, and emotionally, to inspire, engage and ultimately, uplift through the medium of oil paint and marks.

To a 'handler of paint', the computer destroys 'gesture'. Surface quality and texture are vital and no quality of digital reproduction compensates. So images here are just introductions. Successful paintings are stepping stones towards understanding. Fine Art breathes or dies. Like music, it does not rely on superficial or vicarious similarity to something else, and are best understood intuitively.

Most works are for sale. I have exhibited over the last 25 years, mostly in Cornwall, but have reached a stage when I am more interested in the ideas within paintings, the breath they create and the communication they promote, than in chasing commercial success so I keep prices as low as possible, hoping to recoup material costs, which are quite considerable because I use a lot of paint.

Studies and older work are available at even lower prices. If collectors, artists and galleries would like to see earlier work, please ask. Images may be seen as e-mail attachments in the first instance.

If an image intrigues you, please enquire. There is absolutely no obligation to buy and all thoughtful comments are valued. Whether my pictures speak to you, even as digitised reproductions, I hope you feel they warrant some contemplation. Thanks for coming this far at least.