I had a difficult time at art college, meeting opposition at every turn, so it was not able to give me the knowledge that I needed to be able to pursue my ultimate goal which was to pursue, through the use of chance as an organising principle, the possibility of technically sampling art history to produce complex abstract works that could carry the energy of all that was woven in to them.

I therefore decided to apprentice myself to artists that I admired, through writings (Vasari etc), through observation of artists and restorers at work, and through association with people who’s technical capability I admired.

I began by limiting myself to drawing and when I had established a firm ground in that I allowed colour and paint to enter. This process lasted many years and the decding factor in the end was the burning down, in 1989, of the building where I had a studio through which I lost the majority of the work up to that point. This event catapaulted me into actually beginning to put the theory into practice and at the same time to leave England for Holland where they were much more open to my “insane” ideas of giving the organisation over to chance (John Cage).

for the images relating to this learning process please revisit the dropdown menu and follow the links to “Drawing”, “Figuration” and “Early Abstraction”