I describe myself as someone who creates stuff and paints things. It is my own crude form of psychotherapy... pouring the days emotions onto a canvas and squishing them around with a brush. Weathered timber and rusted steel is too often under-appreciated or completely overlooked. I like to up-cycle scrap into precious artworks, by building my own canvases from rusty old milking sheds, and adorning them with portraits of the former inhabitants. For commission works (usually cows, dogs, horses etc.) I like to suggest to clients that they provide a bit of old corrugated iron or weather worn timber, salvaged from their own family property. This can be incorporated within the artwork to retain an actual piece of their heritage, generating a bond with the artwork that goes well beyond the image itself. The fact that it is also helping to save the planet is just another added bonus. The beauty of up-cycling is that it enables me to salvage discarded materials destined for the tip, convert them into treasured artworks (often already with naturally aged patinas), and retain a little bit of local history that may otherwise be lost. I guess I’m helping to clean up the planet, one artwork at a time, and at the same time helping people to appreciate that indeed “one person’s trash can be another’s treasure”. My interest in art was largely fostered by my mother from a very young age. Although, I initially shunned it to pursue a career in engineering, my creative mind was never truly at rest. I finally picked up the paintbrush again at the age of 40, and began dabbling. As a self-taught artist, my style of work has a slightly alternative approach stemming from my background in sheet metal engineering, architecture and construction, which enables me to utilise a wide variety of materials and processes. I’m equally at home carving timber or stone, stitching steel or fabric, as brush painting on canvas or digitally. Creating art can be a lonely existence, yet 2 years ago I finally became a full time artist when I met my wife Ruth. Creativity is now a wholly fulfilling collaborative joint venture as we completely complement each other’s styles and enjoy working on pieces together in total harmony. Life is wonderful.