I've been involved in art since as long as I can remember. Both my parents were good artists – my mother leaned toward the abstract, and my father toward drawing and design. My father was also a pilot. His job saw the family based all over the world through the sixties, seventies and eighties. We lived in New Guinea (I was born there), Fiji, Kenya, Indonesia and Malaysia. I’m in my forties now, so as you can imagine there wasn’t much in the way of electronic entertainment for the kids. My principal form of entertainment was drawing - usually ships, planes, animals and soldiers. Some of the fondest memories of my childhood involve sitting at the kitchen table with my brother and drawing. When Dad was around, we would present them for a critique. Never one for unearned praise, he would change a curve, narrow a wing and reshape a tail. He had an unerring eye for detail and form, on almost any subject. 

My mother introduced me to oil paints in my early teens. She didn’t try to push me toward abstract art, but did encourage me to diversify and ‘loosen up’ a bit with my technique. My natural inclination was toward realism and well defined subject matter – planes, ships and animals. My first significant oil painting was completed when I was sixteen, and aeroplane engaged in a fight.

 I continued painting through the eighties and nineties, focusing mainly on wildlife and aviation subjects. My original aviation subjects were achieving good prices and I also won or was awarded places in numerous art exhibitions. 

In 2000 I decided to face my demons and focused purely on landscape art for a few years. I was growing dissatisfied with the one dimensional nature of my aviation and wildlife compositions, and set about a self-taught crash course on landscape art. I must admit, a mentor would have been useful, but sometimes doing it yourself can be fulfilling. The initial results were promising, and pretty soon I was making sales in the genre. My skills in landscape painting dramatically improved my aviation art, not only in composition, but in technique and speed. This was manifested three years in a row, when I won and came second in the RAAF Heritage Art Awards. 

These days I split my painting load between landscape and aviation art. I have works in collections all over the world now, thanks to the ubiquity of the Internet. My subject matter to-date has been confined to the Blue Mountains in NSW, the Snowy Mountains, the Mornington Peninsular in Victoria, and of course, Sydney's magnificent harbour, which I am lucky enough to live within site of.