Picking Daisies

Picking Daisies

Once upon a time, long, long ago, a father taught his son to draw.  The youth showed a precocious talent. An uncle portrayed as a ‘great ape’ because he called the boy ‘monkey face’, was teased by his brothers about the drawing, and never forgave the lad. Art college...
Collecting Artist Prints

Collecting Artist Prints

I have been a collector most of my life.  At ten I was collecting matchbox toys. At 12 it was British and Commonwealth postage stamps. At 16 it was Cypriot wine bottle labels. In art college, I began looking at collecting the work of other artists, starting with work...
Aftershocks

Aftershocks

Slowly, slowly I am getting back to working in the studio. I am generally an optimist, some have called me a gambler, a risk taker, but that has been my life, and has enabled me to advance both in art and design, and to succeed, fail, succeed again in business. Cancer...
An African Gem: Bushmans Kloof

An African Gem: Bushmans Kloof

I fell in love with Africa in 2008. I had visited the continent before, as a child in the 1960’s, visiting Tunisia and Libya. I had experienced the Arab Africa, the souks, the Sahara and the Saharan Atlas, in my teenage years. Its landscape and brilliant light forever...

Traumatized

It didn’t start well. The show was hung, and the private view was going well, but I was starting to feel increasingly unwell. One of the visitors said my painting made her heart sing, but I was inarticulate, barely able to hold a conversation, not an intelligent one...
What do you paint?

What do you paint?

Classic question, isn’t it? Everyone’s response when you say you paint, occasionally bitten off halfway through when the questioner realises the foolishness of asking.  “I do flower paintings” is my standard riposte to this question. An answer as misleading as the...
Shock to the System

Shock to the System

It’s just on three months since I had the nephrostomy. Three months with a catheter into my kidney draining wastes into a bag strapped to my leg.  Three months of this sploshing as a half full bag of piss moves against my leg as I walk. Three months of this warm damp...