I paint mainly figurative work in a representative and somewhat expressive (as opposed to impressionistic) style. I was educated at Rhodes University in South Africa, under the tutelage of Noel Hodnett (who now resides in Vancouver and is represented by the Buschlen Mowatt Gallery). I received a BFA with distinction in painting. My education there was a traditional one, with the emphasis on drawing and working from life.  However, the pushing forward of painterly boundaries was also very much encouraged.  I still work from this Modernist standpoint and constantly try to allow the painting to lead the way: in other words I use the accidental paint mark as inspiration, thereby allowing new and unexpected changes to happen.  In this way I can challenge myself creatively as well as technically. I very much believe in the Modernist spirit and support philosophical movements such as Neomodernism, which is linked to the ideas of Ágnes Heller (born 1929 in Budapest, Hungary).  Neomodernism, unlike Remodernism, acknowledges Postmodernist art movements, but, like Re-modernism, does not consider Modernist values outdated.
      
After leaving Rhodes University, I went on to complete an MFA with distinction in both painting and theory at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. My thesis was entitled “Tactility, Illusionism and the Depiction of Flesh in Selected Contemporary Painting”.  Focusing on the work of Francis bacon and Lucien Freud, as well as my own, I discussed how painting that gives an illusion of external reality can often induce powerful tactile sensations in the viewer, even though it is primarily a visual art. My hypothesis was that through a particular painting process, during which the artist responds in a bodily way to viewed objects, a certain textural paint mark can be produced.  This is true of my own painting process, and, when achieved, makes the difference between a merely clever work and a truly passionate one.

I often use myself as a model although not all of the work based on myself I would consider to be self-portraits.  I change my features or, rather, do not attempt a likeness of myself in certain paintings that focus on more general things, such as creating a figure in an undefined space, or rendering a certain kind of light or bodily form.  Recently I have been concentrating on portraits of other people, particularly that of my young son.  However, these are also directed by unplanned or accidental brush strokes and composition.  I allow the process of painting to show in the final work by keeping the paint marks visible.  This keeps a freshness, narrates a history and focusses on the physical substance of paint that went to into making the image.