My Story
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1990
I am taken to my first navy days this event would be one of the main reasons I developed my interest in the navy. I would attend almost every event held over the years at Portsmouth, Plymouth and Chatham until it finished in 2010.
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1996
My enthusiasm for ships and the sea was becoming apparent to everyone around me and I take every opportunity in my spare time to sketch, I also begin to build basic display models. Meanwhile at school all my teachers realise my interest in the subject and encourage me to develop it, I am also showing signs that I have a talent for painting.
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2000
My parents advise me to join the sea cadets to see if a career in the navy may be for me, I stayed with the cadets for four years and in this time I learned basic sailing and went on many trips one of the most important was a week at H.M.S. Raleigh while I enjoyed the trip by the end of it I was pretty sure that I preferred drawing and researching the ships rather than going down a military career path.
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2004
Through the advice of my art teachers I chose to study A level fine art and design, I was beginning to consider the possibility of using my creative skills, post school education. During this time I studied many marine painters my main inspiration came from William Lionel Wyllie a brilliant painter who has left us with some of the finest marine art available today.
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2008 / 2013
While doing a full time job I began to spend all my spare time creating new models at this point I made my mind up to make my hobby into a career and so I started to invest in all the equipment I would require such as tools and creating a suitable workstation, I also invested heavily in creating a suitable reference library. This was the period I started to make people aware that I was building models for commission, I did this through the internet and scale model world, this is the biggest model show of its kind in the world. I have entered many of my models into the competition and have had success every year; I will continue to enter this competition.
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2014
This was the year where painting would make an unexpected return into my life this happened while I was showing a fine military artist, Mark Littlejohn my model portfolio, he was impressed by what I had created and informed me that he began his painting career from a love of model making himself. He gave me some advice “buy a canvas and see what you can create” I proceeded to purchase an easel, decided on oil paints (which I had never used before) and brought the basic equipment I would need and completed three paintings, one of which was brought straight away by a colleague at work.
June/September
While I was in Cornwall I happened to meet a great wildlife painter called Hillary Mayes, Hillary has helped me develop many of the skills which I now use in my paintings and continues to offer me guidance which I am hugely grateful for. On one of my visits to her gallery I was showing her some paintings and a gentleman came in looked at them and commissioning me to paint his former ship he served on in the Royal Navy, my first professional commission and the promise of more to follow.
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2015
I now had a number of commissions completed and a number of paintings available in the Arcs of fire gallery, a link to which is available on this site. I have also developed a very successful facebook page with an enthusiastic group of followers. With a steady stream of commissions now coming in I decided to have this website created in order to give people who wish to purchase my work an accessible place in which to do so and make myself much easier to reach.