My Abstract Work

I have been committed to abstract painting since 1974 when the key to abstract symbolism and expression turned in the lock for me.

My canvasses allow me to show my full range of skills, combining complex paint handling techniques with abstract design of space and form. Deconstructed runic symbols play across the highly textured landscape of the canvas surfaces…when the random elements collide with the pre-determined structure of the design, the energy released puts the whole image into constant movement.

My prints provide a foil to the complexities of the canvases allowing me to experiment, sometimes with rapidly cut paper stencils in screen printing or with the slow control of wood cut.

Born in 1951, I was fascinated by my childhood landscape of North Manchester and Oldham, with its shattered mixture of industry and shrinking countryside. Farms and valleys squeezed between railways, cotton mills and old canals produced a strong visual vocabulary, which I drew and painted as I grew up. The mixture of beauty and pollution and the juxtaposition of natural havens and man-made devastations thrilled and appalled me in equal measure. The intoxicating effect of this environment in my early years must have instilled a desire for contrast and dissonance that regularly arises in my abstract work.

Since then mountain landscape, organic form and a love of typography and design, both architectural and mechanical, have all fused with my early inspirations and have enabled me to work in a variety of media.