About Me

I was born and brought up in a town on the edge of Britain's industrial West Midlands. After finishing a Zoology degree, I spent several years travelling and working abroad, in between stints of living back around Birmingham. I began whittling wood with an Opinel lock knife (see below) in about 1994 whilst working at a youth hostel in Ironbridge, UK. This gave me an easy-to-carry way of carving objects from bits of wood that I found, whilst moving around and living out of a rucksack for long periods of time. I still use the same knife! In 2005, I completed an honours degree in Three Dimensional Design (Designer Maker) at the University of Plymouth campus in Exeter and have remained based in the West Country ever since.

Some of the artists and makers whose work particularly interests me include; the sculptors Constantin Brancusi, Auguste Rodin, Barbara Hepworth and Isamu Noguchi, the design philosophy of David Pye, stone carver Peter Randall-Page and wood carvers Ian Norbury, Dick Onians, John Nelson and Paul Caton

The artists Richard Long, Hamish Fulton, Mark Dion, David Nash, Chris Drury and Andy Goldsworthy

The 19th century wood block prints of Hiroshige and Hokusai and japanese 'netsuke'

The Jewellery of Rene Lalique

The sculptural furniture of Tim Stead, Neil Lossock, Hector Guimard and Jim Partridge

as well as the often anonymous makers of traditional African and Papuan masks and sculpture.

The objects which I make reflect my interest in craft skills, particularly whittling wood, wood carving, stonecarving and metalwork. I am fascinated by the stories associated with objects made by hand, whether they come from collecting the raw materials, forming the object itself or its existence after it leaves the maker and goes out into the world.