I am a representational artist working primarily with soft pastel for the primal experience of fingers, pigment, surface.

I like surprising people’s pre-conception of pastels by using vibrant layers of pigment (mostly they’ve only seen pastels used in pale depictions of courtroom villains).

My career was in science and technology so my artistic voice struggles against seeing the world as data to be represented objectively. I started painting late in life and I’m enjoying seeing the world with fresh eyes.

There is so much to paint and so little time that I find it difficult to focus on one subject but my favourites are mountain vistas, the everyday world of urban life, flowers and portraits.

My influences are the Impressionists, particularly Sorolla; and contemporary pastellists Alain Picard and Tony Allain. They all play with light as if it were alive.