Paintings

I learned to paint in oils at school and loved their vibrancy of colour. The first paintings I made after leaving school were in oils but after I moved to London, living in small rooms with little space to paint, I worked in acrylics which were much easier to work with and wouldn’t overwhelm me with fumes. I longed to return to oils and from 1993 onwards I painted exclusively in oil, using gold and silver leaf and occasionally acrylic for large expanses of block colour. The earliest paintings were quite realist, but quickly I wanted to work closely from my sketches and retain the bold lines and fill them with bright colour. It was a way to bring the moment captured by the sketch to life. I would often incorporate elaborate patterns in the background. As I continued, I moved away from the patterning in favour of lines and bold colours.

Alison, Bristol oil on canvas 76cm x 51cm, 1986

This was the first oil painting I embarked upon two years after leaving school, the first that I did just for myself, a small sketching easel propped up in the attic where I was living in South Manchester. Alison was a dear friend from the years I had spent in Bristol.

Stevie and Scarlet and a Red Headed Green Mccaw Highgate, oil on canvas 105cm x 80cm, 2011

In 2011 I was asked by Ceri Levy to participate in an exhibition of paintings of extinct or soon to be extinct birds that he was curating as part of his “Ghosts of Gone Burds” project with Ralph Steadman. I chose the Red Headed Green Mccaw, and decided to include my two daughters, Stevie (seated) and Scarlet.

Hoj, Eddie and Chris, Brandon Hill, Bristol oil on canvas 91cm x 71cm, 1993

This was the first painting I had done in oils in many years, having been confined to small rooms in flats I had previously painted in acrylic because it was so easy to use. I was still thinking of doing a series of paintings based on my school friends and this depicts three of them, Hoj, Eddie and Chris, bunking off school one morning, on Brandon Hill.

Heroin, Its My Wife and Its My Life, oil and silver leaf on canvas, 200cm x 105cm, 1998

My friend James told me that they had graffitied the Heswall Bowls Clubhouse. We used to get drunk on the green when we were teenagers. I always loved the contrast between the respectable game of crown green bowls and the drinking and drug taking that went on there after dark. This is what I imagined in my head, although the real bowls club is a much more modest affair.

Soho Triptych 1

I lived in Soho in London between 1991 and 1996, without doubt some of the happiest and most exciting years of my life. Despite living in modest flats, I always found time to paint. I was doing a lot of life drawing at the time and I wanted to find a way to paint the nudes. Justine Frischmann, from Elastica as part of her degree show, showed a video of a nude woman dancing with a Union Jack projected onto her and that became the inspiration for this work. The backgrounds were made up of the cards sex workers left in telephone boxes that I would pass every day on my way to work. They reflected a very English attitude to sex which tied together with the images I had painted.

Soho Triptych 3

Soho Triptych 2

Paintings

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