I’ve drawn or painted more or less all my life, with a childhood dominated by artistic activity, most of it through my own motivation. Several things led to this.
My father was a headmaster who actively encouraged the arts as a form of education, which was unusual at the time.
Also, we had no television and few other outlets for creative leanings, so early on I became acquaint with the need to generate my own momentum.
Being an artist is a fairly solitary life so the ability to be self-propelled as a child has come in useful ever since.
I studied at Edinburgh College of Art, getting an honours degree in Drawing and Painting. I learnt little about art but a lot about myself.
I kept painting, indifferently at times, but my work changed when I came across the paintings of the Canadian artist Tom Thomson, one of the ‘Group of Seven’.
Since then I have painted in many remote parts of Northern Scotland, always carrying boards and canvases with me, not usually sketching but doing full scale paintings.
Recent major solo shows include ‘A Northern land’, 2004 at the Kilmorack Gallery, which centred round a trip to St.Kilda.
Then, in 2007, I had a show ‘Signs of life’ at Brown’s Fine Arts. In 2010, I returned to Kilmorack for a show titled ‘Until the day break’.