I thought it might be a good idea to mention some of the artists that I like. Joan Eardley is probably the biggest influence on my work, but having studied and taught art history there are artists in every century that I constantly look back at. 

I remember while still at the Polytechnic Wolverhampton 1984 to 1987 studying for my degree, one of my tutors after seeing me struggling with a seascape showed me a tiny book of artworks by Joan Eardley. It was one of a series of books by the same author through which I first became familiar with quite a few Scottish painters like William Gillies also a strong influence on my work and William Mc Taggert.

 J. M. W. Turner has always been someone I have studied intensely. paintings like ‘The fighting Temeraire Tugged to her Last Berth to be Broken up 1838′ and ‘ Slave Ship, Slavers Throwing Overboard The Dead and Dying. Typhoon Coming on. 1840 and are just extraordinary paintings not only in the way they are painted but that in concert with all the philosophical and social comentary and history that goes along with those works and so I very quickly became immersed in that whole romantic tradtion. But my struggle has always been and continues to find my own way of expressing something about my own fascination with nature in a contemporary way and it seemed that Joan Eardley’s work was pointing in the right direction, So here are some examples of paintings that for me are sublime.