Walking into the Seagram murals by Mark Rothko changed my life. I was 12. Our art teacher had taken us to Tate Britain, and I don't remember any other exhibit from that visit. Just that room. The visceral power of it – the emotion in the colour, the atmosphere, the intensity. I'd never experienced anything like it. That's when I knew I wanted to spend my life making art.

It didn't work out that way. Not at first.
 

I tried art college twice. Failed once. Got distracted by nightclubs and having a good time. Discovered design at college and realised I could combine creativity with the three-dimensional experience I'd felt in that Rothko room. I spent 30 years designing nightclubs, bars, shops and restaurants around the world. I was good at it. I'm proud of it.
 

But throughout those 30 years, I painted. Weekends. Evenings.
Not with a mission. Just a love of the act itself.

Eventually I had to admit I'd taken the wrong fork in the road.
 

In 2010, I moved my family back to Manchester. We bought a house with a huge garage at the end of the garden. I converted it into my studio. That's when my journey as an artist really began.


 

HOW THIS SITE WORKS

I've structured this website as chapters – an archive of my journey.

I'm not trying to construct a signature style. The art world loves the idea that you find one thing, stick to it, and that's what you become known for. I tried that. Found it boring. So I follow each new idea as it occurs naturally. When a chapter feels complete, I move on. That's why I present my work chronologically, most recent first.
 

There are rules about how artists should present their work. Most boil down to: say nothing, let the work speak. That works in a gallery. It doesn't work here. Everything I make has thinking behind it. I just don't want to shroud it in curatorial gobbledygook. So at the beginning of each chapter I explain plainly what I was exploring.


 

WHAT RUNS THROUGH IT ALL

Certain themes keep appearing across the chapters:

• The connection between visual form and emotion

• The confusion and joy of life

• What creates the character of a person beyond their exterior form

• A love of nature – and horror at the damage we're doing to this planet

• The random, the accidental, the beauty in chaos

• Life as an experience in cities