ABOUT ME

I am a professional artist based on the Tweed Coast (Nth NSW / South Gold Coast, Australia).
I have 17 years experience as a fine artist, and over the last 14 years I have also worked as an illustrator and art teacher.
Over the last year I have had the chance to work as a concept artist and illustrator in the film industry, which has been great fun as well as a challenge to my abilitys. My aim is to keep getting film and TV work as well as continuing to find work with book and comic book publishers.
Another area that is very exciting is the rapidly growing computer gaming art scene which is always looking for skilled artists.

Up until 1999 I worked mainly in traditional media (pencils, charcoal, oil paint, acrylic, water colour), but over the last 8 years I have become very appreciative of digital media and I do most of my work now in Photoshop and Painter.

I started off my art training learning figure drawing and painting with David Paulson (one of Australia's best figure draughtsmen and a great painter) )in Brisbane. In 1994 I headed for Sydney to get a solid grounding in Classical Figure Drawing and Painting at the The Julian Ashton Art School, The Rocks. I lived and worked in Sydney until 2000, when I moved north and in 2002 took a Master of Arts degree in Visual Art at Griffith University, South Brisbane.
Along the way I have made friends with and studied with lots of superb artists, including Archibald Prize Winners Frank Giacco and Nigel Thompson, and illustration greats Glenn Lumsden and Tony Champ.

I am a person who can get interested in almost any subject, so my personal subjects of interest are rather broad - I really get into reading or watching books or films (and am getting into games) to do with history, science, science fiction, warfare, poetry, exotic cultures, languages, philosophies, psychologies and martial arts.

I study Japanese language and culture, particularily pre Meiji, (but I do get into modern stuff like manga and anime). I speak conversational Icelandic and I sometimes read sagas aloud in Old Norse at Viking re-enactment events.
Making art of any kind is such a cool way to make a living, and so work for me is pretty much what I would do anyway! I am always experimenting with digital art and the cross over of work from the 'real' to the 'unreal real' (if you know what I mean!)

One of the highlights of my life was to meet Ray Harryhausen, the creator of the animatronics in classic films like Sinbad,Jason and Argonauts and The Valley of Gwanji. I even got to see the fighting skeleton models!

Besides art my other great passion is practicing ancient oriental arts, in particular Yoga and Wing Chun kung fu.
This photo is of Sifu Jim Fung, the extraordinary kung fu master and founder of the International Wing Chun Academy. I joined the school in 1997 and have trained with them on and off ever since.
Sifu sadly passed away this year, but I treasure this photo taken at the Surfers Paradise school a couple of years ago,at the celebration for the 30th anniversary of the forming of the school.
Behind us are some pages from a comic book I started creating years before about the legendary origin of the Wing Chun kung fu style.

Sifu really encouraged me both as a visual artist and a martial artist, and I am really into kung fu training again, being lucky enough to share my little country town with a couple of Sifu Jim's top students.
It just goes to show its not where you live but who you live with.