My background is as an exhibiting painter and printmaker following a
BA in Fine Art from the University of East London in 1997. From this point I started to exhibit my work annually and have had exhibitions in Italy, the North East of England and Swindon. Some have been supported by the Arts Council of England. My artwork has gone to private collections in the UK, USA, Canada and Italy.
I continued my education with a Post-Graduate Diploma in Arts Management from the University of Northumbria in 2000 and put my new-found skills to work for various arts organisations such as North Tyneside Arts, Waygood Gallery and Seven Stories.
In 2003 I spent three magical months making and decorating carnival masks in Il Salotto delle Maschere in Venice, Italy.
I completed an MA in Computer Animation from the University of Teesside in 2005 after a long-time interest in animation. This lead to a Fellowship with The DigitalCity to work on my original short film “A Small Room” in which also attracted funding from Northern Film and Media.
I went on to do video and animation work with UK Haptics where I came runner up in the 2006 Codeworks Connect Creativity Prize. Recently I have been teaching a 3D animation module on the Multimedia Foundation Degree at Northumberland College.I have just spent a year making films and animations with the students of Collingwood Media Arts College in my role as Media Arts Technician. I am currently lecturing on a Foundation Animation and Illustration Degree in a North East College while studying for a PGCE part-time.
My interests lie in generating creative ideas and their subsequent implementation in whatever form. My current inspirations are angels, Venice, statues, classic art and storytelling with a twist. For my traditional work I use mainly oils, collagraph, monoprinting and pencils. In my CG and animation work I use Softimage XSI, Autodesk Maya, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop and Artrage 2.
