About

Each work begins in the mind: an idea, pushed and pulled until it finds its shape. Only then does it reach the surface, first as contour, then as mass.

My father was an artist and a teacher, and he held that good drawing is the foundation of good painting. So I work deliberately: a careful underdrawing, thin washes laid in patiently, and the final layers of paint built up over them.

My approach is academic realism, shaped by the writings of John Ruskin, Harold Speed and Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, and by the classical drawing courses of Bargue and Gérôme, Reverdin, Julien and Ducollet. An oil painting begins on a primed canvas with a restrained block-in of the overall shapes, which I refine into a fairly finished drawing before laying in a thin first wash. From there the painting is built in layers: a grisaille to settle the values, then successive glazes that bring depth and colour.

In ink and wash I allow myself more freedom. The line arrives by intuition and happy accident, and I let the washes build until the work holds the feeling I am after.

Charcoal is one of my greatest joys. I came to it late, and its rich blacks, its smooth blending and the way it sits so naturally beside oil painting captured me from the first time I tried it. Sometimes I draw in the academic tradition: disciplined, controlled, measured. At other times I let the line go and allow it to find its own way.

I live and work in Cape Town, South Africa.

See the work: Painting, Works on Paper and Studies/Sketches. For enquiries, get in touch.