When I started painting, I started with the very hardest discipline- portraits. I'd been bowled over by an exhibition of Leicester artist Paul Wright’s amazing paintings and wanted him to teach me how to paint! He was and is a wonderful teacher and good friend. 

It was Paul’s influence that had me seeking out colours not just in skin but in other things too, in roses and hens. I then realised how very much easier it is to paint anything but portraits! Much as I love it, the tiniest stroke of the brush turns one person into an entirely different person!

But when I succeed in capturing a person’s character, which I’m told I do, there is no better feeling.

I paint all portraits in oils because a portrait will live forever, passed down through generations. The essence of why I paint.