While
studying Art A-level, I was made aware of the Pre-Raphaelite artists,
and I fell
completely for their style, ideology and devotion. At the
height of the punk rock era, 1976, I went to Shrewsbury School of Art
for an art foundation course. Around then my head was filled with
rock'n'roll and 1950's iconography, and I wanted to learn how to use an
airbrush, to paint pictures of Cadillacs, Wurlitzers, and anything else
flashy
and chromy. I found new heroes in Pop Art, both British and
American, and was probably at odds with most of my contemporaries who
were a wonderful mix of hippies and punks. In 1977 I headed to Newport,
Gwent for a degree course. It was a three year opportunity to develop
my ideas, and funnily enough I think I came out of it trying to meld
together a strange mix of Pre-Raphaelite thinking and Pop iconography.
Whether it worked or not I don't know, but I have survived as an
illustrator ever since, so something is working there.
My early years of freelance saw me almost exclusively wielding the airbrush for a living, largely amongst the graphic design studios and advertising agencies of Newport, Cardiff and Bristol. In 1987, Quartet published my book 'An Introduction to Airbrushing and Photo Retouching', and around about that time, by supreme irony, things began to change in the advertising world as computers came in and airbrush illustration began a simultaneous decline - I won't go into the whys and wherefores here, but it did become clear that I would have to adapt to survive.
What rescued me was probably my fondness for the Pre-Raphaelites, because I had already become more enthused with a painstaking approach to my painting, and even some of their subject matter was beginning to creep into my own work.
The
1990's saw me married off and getting used to parenthood. My wife,
Olly, is a graphic designer, and we work together
as a partnership
called The Beacon Studio. Olly is kept incredibly
busy within the Welsh
publishing world. We have worked from our home in
Pembrokeshire since
1995, and draw endless inspiration from our surroundings,
indeed many
of my paintings just wouldn't have happened anywhere else.