UPDATED MAY 2025

In the studio

I’ve been spinning a series of artworks over the last couple of years, continuing to develop my core themes, language and leitmotifs.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT >

First off is the ‘Tapestry’ series which I’m currently working on.

These paintings go back to my roots as a textile designer in many ways - I was lucky to be taught the value of mark-making and surface texture/manipulation back in Scotland - and sometimes you search for decades attempting to find a style when all the while it was hiding in plain sight. How ever much I try, I’ll never be Vermeer or Rembrandt - I can only ever be me.

Whilst I’m using Artificial Intelligence to garner reference (and it’s superb), it will never replace the human mark.

For as long as painting exists, human emotion will always seek out an individual’s unique story.

Tapestry series
American Tapestry #1 (In progress)
Oil and mixed media on canvas and linen / 400cm x 135cm (Diptych)

British (indeed World) culture has been wholly subjugated in my lifetime by an over-saturation of Americana in all its many forms - cartoons, TV and film, war and the military/industrial complex, technology ad infinitum. And, in many ways, I love bits of it. But that’s not to say I can’t subvert its myriad psychoses.

A large mural featuring a young girl with braided hair, wearing a white blouse and denim jumper, holding a basket, with a background filled with pastel-colored clouds, airplanes, and pixel art graphics.

Dorothy, as winged angel, betrays the myth of America (Garland was ruined by Hollywood) surrounded by Hellfire missiles and Stealth bombers with a host of cartoon characters in mock celebration. Vestiges of dollar signs and the Space Shuttle. A Bald Eagle swoops past sequences from ‘Psycho’, as an Apache flies upwards. Comedic iconography adds a satirical twist.

A portrait painting of a woman with eyes closed and mouth open, rendered in pastel tones of pink, blue, and purple with abstract line patterns in the background.
A colorful abstract painting of a crying child with a background featuring a windmill and geometric shapes.

At 4 metres across, it’s quite an undertaking and I’m intrigued to find out where it finally ends up. Who knows, but that’s the thrill of it all. Much to do, lots to learn.

A colorful illustration of a cartoon dog holding a microphone, with doodles of a smiling poop emoji wearing glasses and handwritten text on the left side.
Street art with a cartoon mouse playing a trumpet, a fighter jet, and a rocket on a pink and purple background with pixelated graphics and dollar signs.
A colorful mural featuring a girl with wings, holding a flag and a fishing rod with a dog hanging from the line, with an American flag design. The girl is smiling and is dressed in a vintage style. The background has a pastel sky with clouds and geometric shapes.

Tapestry series: Small studies (In progress)
Oil and mixed media on canvas and linen

Bomb Scare 100cm x 70cm
Who shot Black Bambi? 97cm x 77cm

A colorful mixed media artwork featuring a painting of Mickey Mouse with butterfly wings, surrounded by various abstract shapes, symbols, and a partially visible face of a woman with an expressive gaze.
Colorful mural with a flying spaceship, a blue deer with a black mask on its face, a small pink bird, a smiling poop emoji, a cartoon rabbit, and a house in the background, set against a pastel abstract background.

Tapestry series: Blue Marion (In progress)
Oil and mixed media on linen / 120cm x 100cm

A blue-themed art mural featuring Disney characters Donald Duck and two small birds, with a portrait of a woman driving a space shuttle labeled 'NASA United States' and pixelated alien skulls in the background.

Tapestry series: Psychobabble
Oil and mixed media on canvas / 200cm x 100cm

I have a continuing fascination with the film ‘Psycho’ and Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane in particular. Oh, untimely death! The Disney characters hints at my love of the cartoon and the comic book frame (I’m from Dundee, land of Dennis and Gnasher) and its sense of suspended animation. Look away temporarily and the whole thing’s moved on.

Mixed media wall art featuring a large image of Mickey Mouse, colorful splashes, and sketches of other original characters and patterns.
A mixed-media piece featuring a woman's portrait with an X over her mouth, cartoon birds, and a cartoon duck holding a U.S. flag, all set against an abstract background with scribbles and paint splatters.
Mixed media artwork featuring a cartoon character, Tweety Bird, in the top left corner, and several human portraits in orange tones at the bottom.
Mixed media artwork featuring a helicopter, Mickey Mouse, a small bird, abstract patterns, and colorful splatters and sketches.

Tapestry series: Original studies
Mixed media on canvas boards / wooden panels

Triple Psycho 66cm x 46cm
Invaders 66cm x 46cm
Shoot! 180cm x 50cm

Artwork featuring three pop art portraits of women with colorful, abstract elements and black crosses over the eyes of two women, and a purple plus sign attached to the head of the leftmost portrait.
Mixed media collage including a vintage black-and-white photograph of a woman, stickers of Mickey Mouse, a line drawing of a bird, geometric patterns, and abstract scribbles on a textured background.
Street art mural featuring military helicopters, explosions, and cartoon characters, including a yellow character with black hair in a yellow background on the right side.

Tapestry series: Original sketchbook pages

Open art journal displayed on a wooden easel, featuring collaged images and mixed media with abstract and figurative elements, including a child's face, dark smudges, handwritten annotations, and oversized black curly brackets.
A black and white art piece displayed on an easel, with the left side being white with a black circular element, and the right side having a textured, distressed appearance.

Tapestry series: Kimono (In progress)
Dye, mixed media on constructed canvas garment

An all-too-rare three-dimensional piece, focusing on a kimono I designed and constructed in canvas (big up to Lynsey Colbourne). And it has a long way to go to get to where I want it to be - softly, softly and all that.

Utilising print, spray-paint, drawing and oil painting to capture embryonic narratives on constraint, bondage and servitude.

Colorful painted paper kimono with abstract floral and animal designs, featuring red, orange, pink, and black hues and the number '123' at the bottom.

Updates (May 2025)

Drawing of a fish on red fabric with detailed scale and fin illustration.
Close-up of fabric with a black line drawing of a fighter jet.

Lifecycle series

Some commissions I’ve recently completed. Highly personal to the purchasers in their motifs and colour systems, the general theme of sequences, vestiges and artefacts continues.

Lifecycle #1
Oil on linen / 195cm x 140cm

Two studies: Flightpath/ Fox and Flowers
Oil on linen / TBC

Lifecycle #2
Oil on linen / 200cm x 140cm

Abstract artwork featuring Muybridge cat illustrations, flowers, butterflies, skeletons, and scientific sketches with colourful backgrounds in blue, red, yellow, and orange hues.
Abstract artwork featuring sketches of birds in flight, sketches of a butterfly, a skeleton of a bird, handwritten notes, and mathematical graphs on a colourful background with shades of blue, orange, and yellow.
An abstract art piece featuring a line drawing of a fox skeleton, a detailed cat illustration, flowers in the background with a blend of colourful brushstrokes and drips.
Abstract artwork detail with yellow and blue tones featuring a cityscape, gears, a Tony Hancock holding a cup, and cosmic elements.
A detail featuring a central golden statue from a tarot card by Alistair Crowley, surrounded by celestial and mechanical motifs including gears, stars, and a sun and moon with faces, set against a deep blue background.
A painted detail of Tony Hancock with a cup wearing a dark hat with writing on it and a tea plant. The background includes yellow and blue gears and machinery, with a yellow sky and distant cityscape.

IN PROGRESS

Carte Vista Series (The Visitors)

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‘people take pictures of each other just to prove that they really existed’


The Kinks

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Apparitions and Artefacts

A beautiful book of late 19th century photographs were gifted to me from a friend who discovered them in his loft and they’ve led to a series of oil paintings I’m currently working on.

These exquisite, sepia-toned images, in the Carte Vista style, of people with no name who lived their life as we are, long gone. Laid down like sedimentary rock. Vestiges of their temporary time and place.

The paintings deal with the layering of memory and the nature of perpetual change and impermanence.

Ghosts from a forgotten past, visions of our own future states.

You can see the book here,

Abstract painting of a man with a beard and a mustache, blending realistic and abstract styles, with scribbles and lines on a brown background.

Carte Vista series: Head of a Priest (In progress)
Oil and mixed media on linen / 76cm x 86cm

An abstract painting of a young girl with blue eyes, floral elements, and vibrant colors, blending portraiture with expressive brushstrokes.

Carte Vista series: Young Woman with Flowers (In progress)
Oil on canvas / 100cm x 120cm

A mixed media portrait of a woman with short dark hair, wearing a blue outfit, seated at a desk with a small dinosaur figure on it. The background features colorful abstract elements and floral patterns. The artwork includes handwritten notes and digital clock elements.

Carte Vista series: Woman with an Asterisk (In progress)
Oil and spray-paint on canvas / 120cm x 120cm

A colorful painting featuring a woman with long hair, a toucan, a parrot, and a panther surrounded by green foliage.

Carte Vista series: Menagerie (Retired >)
Oil and spray-paint on canvas / 120cm x 160cm

Mixed media artwork featuring a woman holding a baby, with sketches of fighter jets and a dinosaur skeleton overlaid. Handwritten notes and sketches are present throughout the artwork.

Carte Vista series: Mother and Child (Retired >)
Oil and spray-paint on canvas / 120cm x 160cm