Paintings Gallery

Framed 48"’ x 36"

Designed as part of a 5-painting series to be hung in the form of a crucifixion, this is the bottom painting.

The series is about women and suffering. About how women can nail themselves to the cross of passion and will sacrifice and suffer for love and life – children.

The painting has a strong chiaroscuro and is derived from the tradition of ‘vanitas’ painting.

My partner and Ii were considering the possibility of having children at this time.

6' x 3'

Painting from the incomplete series of 5 ‘crucifixion paintings’, about women and their suffering, sacrifice and anguish to secure love.

The bed is most often the place of sex and love. It has a red sheet for menstruation, birth and passion. The open door is an exit [death].

6' x 3'

Central painting of a planned 5 painting crucifixion form, linking themes of love, suffering, sacrifice, birth and death.

18" x 30"

Based on a pun – 'umbrella analogy'. The surrealists were fond of using umbrellas as an analogy for sexual intercourse. So this ‘flyer’ has a fear of sex (love and intimacy) and the challenge to ‘perform’.

It's painted like a 20's poster of the surrealists time. The handkerchief is like a sheet from a bed. The darkness of night and the handle, like a blind mans stick, refer to subconscious drives and defences.

36" x 24"

This was painted as a birthday gift for Lynne, my partner at the time, and I tried to encapsulate her multi-sided personality.

She could be like day or night. Like the weather vane, she could change with the wind but her romantic side always led her to ‘shoot for the moon’.

She enjoyed making strategies, hence the chess, the ‘castle’ for home building. The death of her father was like a dark cloak. The tortoise shell was her protection and her shadow side was sometimes present. Prominent breasts and phallic candles for her sexuality and the church tower for her shaky religious beliefs.

24" x 18"

The horizon dissects the picture plane, with his head in the heavens above and his body on the earth below.

This is a rather humorous look at the go-between of life and death. He has an earthly sky in his head and on his tie. The painting is framed in watered silk.

I painted this picture when I think I was more afraid of life than I was of death.

Oil on canvas on board

24" x 48"

This early painting is dissected by the horizon, below which,  birth and death play out their transitions while the tranquil moon overlooks.

This could be a graveyard scene with the Cypress trees pointing upward but the red cloth is metaphorical, even theatrical.

28” x 28”

   I got the idea for this painting whilst in Spain.

Walking through a mountain village I passed a window with a very old woman looking out. In the strong sunlight she was barely visible in the shadows. Her skull was virtually visible through her skin, she could have been death itself. The reflection of clouds enhances the other worldliness – a transition window from this world to the next.

  The vision gave me a cold shiver on a baking hot day.

14" x 12"

This began as an unconscious drawing to which I added watercolours.

Harold McMillan's famous statement as prime minister, which seemed a little patronising, forms the title.

30” x 24”

Portrait of a friend when I was living in London. He was Scottish and we played football together.

He commissioned the painting but never paid for it!

24" x 36"

Painted in response to arguments with my partner, the barbed words of anger, vitriol and pain spin from my mouth and surround my grimacing teeth.

The words form a barrier to hurt and defend. The view from my window forms the background but its obscured by the conflict. 

9" x 6"

Taken from a photograph of an anonymous arms dealer from the pages of the Financial Times.

Watercolour and pen on paper

36" x 36"

Based on a the famous photograph from the Vietnam war where a South Vietnamese general shoots a suspect in the head.

Land mass, sea and clouds form the representation. The implication is that such acts of cruelty and hatred resound around the world and effects everyone and everything. Like karma. The cruelty inflicted on another is really an act of self-destruction by the perpetrator. An act against life and the world.

24" x 18"

Although the window is opaque, a break allows the observer to see through the exit door. The tear is one of sadness but also as a cut which will drain the eye of sight, into darkness.

18” x 12”

An early painting taken from a photograph of Isaac Stern.

I wanted to portray the curving form of the violin, the grain of the wood and the sheen of the varnish contrasting with the form and skin of the human face.

The clouds double as his grey hair and suggest the lofty nature of the musician. With his pullover looking like a hillside, the man and his music straddle the heavens and earth.