Art is a rum old thing.  Only philosophers know what it is and even they cannot agree.  As for the rest of us, our views on the subject are as varied as insects in a rainforest.  That is why I no longer try to please others with my work, only myself.  It is, potentially, a somewhat easier task.

Where once I painted victorian cottage scenes I now use a computer to produce 3D digital images.  Ah,  the dreaded computer, the bete noire of so many people.  I find that you either like them or hate them when it comes to art.  Speaking personally, I fell in love with them the first time I figured out how to turn them on and nothing since has changed my feelings towards them.

Most of my work is produced using an older version of Cinema 4D, a German 3D computer graphics program.  Never let anybody tell you that using a computer is easy.  Cinema is one of the easier programs to master and it has still taken me years to get the hang of using it.

One theme dominates my work, the city at night.  The loneliness of winding streets, crooked buildings twisting crazily, deep dark shadows and the intense brilliance of lit windows.  A world of orange street lights, of red green and blue neon and the yellow glare of passing headlights.  The mundane transformed into magic with the onset of night.

On a final note I sometimes wonder if I am still capable of drawing.  Using a computer so much I rarely find time to draw or paint.  It is then that I have to get out the pencils, slow down and draw.

  Examples

Being an artist brings home where one stands in the scheme of things; the bottom of the food chain.  Galleries decide who gets a break and who doesn't, giving them immense importance.  Not being content with being the gatekeepers to the artworld they now want to be involved in the creative process itself.  Well, two can play that game.  I have set up my own gallery, Gallery Nex.  Now I am a gallerist as well as an artist.

Gallery Nex was started with modest aspirations.  It would be used to promote the art of a friend of mine, Arnold B.  Taking over an old shop in 2006 I had no idea how things would develop but it would be an interesting challenge, of that I had no doubt.  So it has proved.

Things have changed.  The gallery has been extensively enlarged and it now represents three full-time artists.  In addition it invites selected artists to mount one-off shows.  It also has an outreach programme whereby art is taken to the people using a converted bus.  Big changes indeed but sometimes I still yearn for the old Gallery Nex.  It was poky but there was a magic about the place that I fear may have been lost.  Oh well, that's progress for you.  One thing that has not changed though is my refusal to show my own work in the gallery.  To do so would, I feel, entail a conflict of interest that could harm the gallery.

Gallery Nex