Childhood memories of long summers and cold winters, the excitement of birthdays and Christmas never left me over the years, and it’s these feelings and playful emotions I like to convey in my work.

 People ask me where I get my ideas from, the quirky animals, the strong colours and strange concepts, but I see them everyday in the street, the people I meet, the feelings I experience. At the end of every day I have hundreds of images fighting for my attention and the chance to be painted; quite often I get carried away with excitement and fill my sketchbook from cover to cover within hours, which although it can be emotionally draining, the flood of ideas each one linking the next, allows me to evolve my work on paper very rapidly giving me such a rich source of reference material.

 The inspiration comes from other artists too, the quirkiness of Will Bullas with his strong characters and whimsical titles but also the surreal Salvador Dali which has offered me a unusual slant on the world and my wife Jayne who forever gives me support in my daily life, but the main inspiration ultimately comes from deep inside drawing on all my experiences, the sketchbook contains only my surface thoughts, it’s only when painting I place my real emotions down, each canvas receiving a different layer of emotion with each session

My colours to complement the compositions come from my work within the fashion industry and provide strong visual statements, the compositions come from interaction; I like to include some form of connection between the items on a canvas, and quite often the eyes will play a big part in leading a viewer's perception, imagine yourself looking from the viewpoint of one of the characters, look around from their point of view inside the canvas observing all the other objects, read the title carefully and try to imagine their feelings - you will then begin to understand what I really felt when I painted the piece and hopefully just like me, smile too!