I began expressing myself in a formal way through different forms of art at an early age of 5 with ballet (which I left the age of 7 because I did not like doing what everyone else was doing!)  At 7 I began piano lessons which were my favourite thing to look forward to, and I started drawing and copying faces and portraits from magazines.

When I was a young child my parents took me to circuses, and I used to fantasise about being in a travelling circus – but I didn’t know what I would do. I would have loved to do trapeze, but I had a fear of heights – so I couldn’t do that!

At the age of twelve, my family moved to New York, near Coney Island by the sea, and I got involved in the alternative lifestyle of the time, hanging out with boys under the boardwalk, smoking grass and listening to a lot of music including The Doors, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. By the age of 15 my father had got terminally ill. We moved back home, and I soon made a group of ‘hippie’ friends and began reading many books on Philosophy, including George Gurdjieff and Pyotr Ouspenskii’s ‘In Search of the Miraculous’. This started my interest in matters of a more metaphysical nature.

I had a great desire to improvise on the piano which at the time was quite dramatic and unfortunately my mother did not approve, so that expression was cut off and I reverted to my room with closed doors and began to paint. Using oils, my first painting of an old man encouraged me to continue painting faces, people and places. I was also writing poetry and had a few poems published in a national newspaper – at age 16 I had a poem called ‘Let it Be’ (an anti-war message) published. 

After high school I went onto the University to study Philosophy. At twenty one I received a scholarship to a prestigious Arts and Design Academy, so I left philosophy to pursue the arts. After one year of art I moved on to filmmaking. However, I soon realized that academia wasn’t going to be right for me at the time and really I wanted to live my life free in the open air, not spend it in dark and stuffy buildings reading books and fulfilling assignments.I was literally ready for adventure .

My life has always been about freedom of experience. I have always wanted to experience everything in life: the dark and the light, the passion and the emotion. For me, it’s all about being true to myself. My spirituality is to live my life. I’ve never really thought about jobs or how to get them. I’ve never thought in those terms. Life for me was always about living, and being who I am. It’s a feeling I’ve always had. It’s self-evident that is what I am meant to do. What I do is what I do, and I am what I am. Admittedly though, I have often taken things to the extreme: falling in love, lots of relationships and so on. I was always a wild child.

After several years of travelling, at twenty-six I moved with a friend into a squat in London which was popular with local artists, and this marked a highly creative phase in my life of painting and some music, and of course parties, where conversations were often of a philosophical nature, discussing the meaning of life and human existence. I moved several times during this period, including at one time living with a group of travelers in a house with no electricity, where I painted some of my best paintings.

After 7 or 8 years of living in London squats, another friend asked if I could look after her children in the south west of England, which brought me to Exmouth in Devon, and thus began a chapter in my life of cleaner living, nature and rent! Devon was a healing place, where I was introduced to hands-on healing practices, crystals and the art of visualization . New Age spiritual practices in Devon were in abundance at that time, and I attended several courses including ‘Open Spirit’ workshops and a course in ‘Contact Dancing’. My passion for painting continued, and I developed an entire series of art during this period.

I would say that a lot of my practice explores the art of allowing:  revealing, letting the unknown be known.  Similar to a sculptor confronted with piece of wood asking it to reveal its essence. Very rarely do I create with intent on a particular result – I would say that my art has always been intuitive and sourcing from the unconscious.

It blends elements of the ethereal and the psychedelic, with Daliesque landscapes populated by faces and figures. Rich with symbolism and meaning, I often don’t entirely know what my paintings mean (while some reveal themselves through time), and I enjoy leaving my creations open for interpretation and discussion. I tend to paint straight onto the canvas, and work in close contact with my instincts, emotions and passions, allowing for change and transformation to occur as the work develops. Even though some of the subject matter may be dark or difficult, I always aim to make the finished piece pleasing to the eye. I seek harmony in the visual composition.

I also use my art to tell stories – stories that are woven out of events that may have occurred in my life, but the meanings of those events are entirely left up to the observer to decide.

When I met one of the great loves of my life, I left my painting behind and we started travelling together, and I returned to my love of music: playing guitar, mandolin, flute and singing. I started to record songs onto cassette tape, and sometimes I would use two tape recorders – one playing and one recording – to layer the tracks together. Eventually we found ourselves travelling to Berlin, Germany. Berlin was incredible. And we experienced such synchronicities there. On the very first night we met the people we needed to meet. It couldn’t have better.

There was a woman who had taken over a big old train station from the Council with many buildings, and a group of people created a project called ‘Raw Temple’, which we became involved with.

In Berlin I had my own project called Spaladonia playing the guitar and singing, but it wasn’t long until I found myself in a couple of groups: one improvisational, the other more tribal in nature. Berlin was the place to be, and from the late 90’s to the early noughties, my musical life continued to evolve.

However my mother was missing me deeply, and she asked me to return home, so we packed our bags and headed back, where we stayed for two years.

Back home, I decided it was time to record an album at a professional studio. And so “Soul Stripping” the album was created, where I performed on electric guitar, clarinet, sang the vocals and wrote the lyrics. In parts experimental and psychedelic in nature, Soul Stripping comprised of eleven songs, and the album was released on CD, accompanied by a video.

After recording my album, and a brief stint at another squat in London, at fifty-three years old my partner suggested I take a one-year course in electronic music production in London, which I did, and loved and which led me – as if by magic – to move to Brighton to study music, achieving a BA in Music from Sussex University. Whilst the course included music composition, music for film and electronic music as standard, to study an instrument (my choice was voice) one needed at least a Grade 8 to qualify; yet I had no grades at all. So, I went to the head of the department, and I brought in my CD, and I said, ‘I’d like to study voice, but I don’t have any grades’. He invited me to take a test, of which I think he heard me for about 2 or 3 minutes, and he accepted me to the course!

Upon completing my BA in Music, I decided to remain in Brighton, and to combine my painting, musical skills, and a growing interest to produce music videos for my YouTube channels. I have become a multidisciplinary artist – I write, paint, create music, make videos and dance. This has been my path since the beginning of my life. I probably screamed a lot as a kid – my mother thought I’d be an opera singer!