My career in Art started quite promisingly; at the age of seven I won a pencil-case in a primary school painting competition. Despite this, at my next school (KCS Wimbledon), I managed to fail my Art O-level, and I only just scraped through my Art A-level.

At University (Ruskin School of Drawing / Magdalen College, Oxford) I painted mostly portraits and figures, despite the best efforts of the tutors to turn me into an Abstract Expressionist.

After University, I lived in Germany for a year, working on building sites and teaching English, before deciding that I wanted to be a painter. I bought a beaten-up old van, filled it with art materials, and spent the next few years driving around Europe teaching myself to paint plein air landscapes.

The highlight of this period of time was a year spent in Tarquinia, a beautiful medieval village north of Rome. I devoted myself to painting almost everything I saw, and I financed myself by drawing street portraits.

Back in London, after a brief spell of teaching Art in schools, I began to realise I might be able to make a living out of selling paintings. Getting on the gallery ladder seemed a pretty daunting task, but an American friend of mine came to London, and showed me how to do it, breezing into a gallery in Kensington and securing us a two-man exhibition.

Since then I have exhibited regularly in London.  Many of my paintings are inspired by my travels, but I don't see myself as primarily a travel painter, a landscape painter, or even a portrait painter. I like to paint a wide variety of subject-matter...whatever inspires me. My aim is simply to do so as well as I possibly can.