Born in Dominica in the Caribbean, in 1947, I became a 'first generation' immigrant at the tender age of seven when I alighted, with hundreds of other hopefuls, from an Italian cruiser at Southampton Docks, in the United Kingdom, in 1955. I navigated through the English education system, emerging at the other end with a clutch of GCE O levels, which was enough to allow me to slide into the Foundation Studies at the Central School of Art, London. ‘Nude’ and ‘Saviour’ are references from this period.
My love of drawing was at its most intense at this period in my career. I spent many hours on the great Heidelberg printing presses and was usually the last person to leave. I enjoyed the intensity of the life drawing. This thirst for knowledge and development was fuelled by the sheer pleasure that the act of drawing inspired within me. Following my completion of the Foundation Course, I was notified of my acceptance onto the Degree course at the Slade School of Fine Art. My interest in art and design might have ended right there, broken on the treacherous reefs of formal art education in 1960s London. However, fate and a headstrong disposition intervened.
I dropped out of the Slade (far out man!).
A chance meeting with a colleague in similar circumstances landed me a job doing 'Paint 'n Trace' on The Yellow Submarine, an animated film featuring the 'Fab Four', the Beatles. This was true serendipity, because it was a fascination with the moving image and a desire to make my own cartoon films which had been one of the key motivating forces behind my activities. Although I did not meet the Beatles, I did have the opportunity to meet the animators, background artists and special effects personnel. To date, the experience has remained as one of the high points of my life.
I left the production set of The Yellow Submarine before the film was completed, heading for Sweden where I hoped that I would see the Aurora Borealis.  I did not make it up to the frozen North, but managed to find work in a milk factory in Stockholm for about two months.  After experiencing a foretaste of the Swedish winter, during which it pelted hailstones, rain and sleet all in one day,
I decided to head south, through to Denmark, Puttgarden, Berlin and Düsseldorf, and eventually to Munich.
I had heard about the October Fest and about all the wild frolicking under canvas tents but alas there was not much of that going on in the chilly youth hostel in central Munich, where once again invisible forces were at work.
I met two young Frenchmen who casually announced that they were on the road to India. I wasn't that keen on their plan. For one thing neither of them had any money and nor did I. The few marks that I had earned doing migrant labour while in Düsseldorf were running out fast and winter was approaching even faster. Therefore, I agreed to tag along with my new French friends only for a while.
We boarded the train from central Munich to Istanbul, where I tasted the bread and fresh fried Äsh sold from boats moored on the Bosphorous, later heading by train and clapped-out bus to Iran, where I saw despair and desperation written on the faces of the people, who were squirming under the Shah of Iran’s iron rule. Heaving a sigh of relief, we boarded the bus to Afghanistan, chugging along the single road through miles of desolate landscape, through Herat, Kandahar and on to Kabul, where I tasted the Old Man from Mazar-e Sharif’s hand rolled shit, and into Pakistan, to Peshawar, Rawalpindi, and Karachi, where I had heard of, but never met, the Black Mamba, a member of an African community which has been living in an area of Karachi known as Chakiwara since the 8th century.
We hiked north to Lahore and into India where I saw the Red Fort, and the Juma Masjid, venturing west to Agra, where I toured the Taj Mahal and saw the inlaid marble stones now Älled with cheap paste, the treasures having been looted and quickly dispatched to the United Kingdom by forces loyal to Crown and Empire.
My travelling companions and I had run out of money ages before, but now we were also beginning to run out of steam. There were few well wishers in Bhopal, but  one family gave us food and introduced me to the writings of Swami Vivekananda an enlightened soul now long dead, whose thought was to have a decisive effect on my own mental processes.
A mishap instigated by a petty thief who stole my friend William’s passport in Bhopal obliged us to head back to Delhi, where I was struck down by a mysterious illness while sleeping rough on the streets.  My condition was diagnosed as so serious that I was admitted into New Delhi Hospital for three weeks, during which I made a rapid and satisfactory recovery. On the very day that I was discharged from the hospital, He happened along, a 'Sanyasi' or 'devout follower', dressed in flowing saffron robes, who invited us to dinner at an ashram.
The Sanyasi, who was English in origin, had an amazing way with words.  In fact, once my friend and I had entered the doors of the Delhi Ashram he never let up about their spiritual leader who was only twelve years old. Had it not been for the generous helpings of dhal, roti, chavel (the dynamic trio), we would certainly have walked out.  However, the words of Vivekananda were reverberating through my mind. Following the departure of my friend back to France and National Service, I moved on to Hardwar and Rishikesh Ashram, where I began to engage in the mysteries into which I had been initiated, culminating in an 'out of body experience' one balmy evening.  I was taken by surprise by the event and although up to the present day I have a healthy scepticism for 'mumbo jumbo' of any kind, I nevertheless harbour the knowledge that there is perhaps more to this existence than might initially meet the eye.
I returned to the United Kingdom and set out to make some money and leave the country fast. This I managed to achieve during the winter of 1970, heading to the 'hippie paradise' of Amsterdam. But alas, a brush with the not-so-nice Dutch police saw me back in the UK after only three weeks away. Therefore I set about finding a job, which incidentally, was far easier to do then than it is today.

 
I also offered my services as designer and painter to a variety of Black 'self help' organisations, which had emerged during a period of Black consciousness in the early 1970s. The Black House, Keskidee Centre and Harambee all readily accepted my desire to do something for the 'Black cause', which was easy for them because they either did not have or did not want to pay any money.
Following relentless pressure from those nearest but not necessarily dearest, I became a Post and Telegraphic Officer in central London, a good, solid job which did bring regular money but which also threatened to leave me brain-dead with tedium.
A colleague, also a postman, advised me to enrol at the London College of Printing to study typography. I seized upon this piece of good advice and emerged in 1976 after a struggle, clutching a rather meaningless Diploma but with the skills of putting a magazine together with some sense of design. I landed a job at the now defunct Africa Journal Ltd and worked with them at their offices in Tottenham Court Road for nine years, moonlighting to do cover designs, cartoons, and page layouts for other publications. This was definitely a productive period for me because during this period I fulfilled a lifelong ambition by visiting West Africa, not once but twice, and also began to work using one of the rooms in our flat as a studio.
My earliest exhibited works were completed during this period. Spanning a period of several decades, these paintings include 'The Dogon’s Tale', a work partially inspired by the writing of Erich von Däniken,  'UK School Report', a response to what I perceived then to be a dangerous lack of the will to encourage achievement in African Caribbean school children, 'Timespan', a work which was inspired by a botched-up job of masonry which ignited a train of thoughts in my mind and which somehow became looped in with my profound interest in the culture of ancient Egypt. 'Learning to walk’ followed in the same mould, and 'Spirit of the Carnival', a spectacular, at least for me; break from the formal rigidity of representation that I had fought against for a while at the Slade.  Some of these works were done on paper using gouache and acrylic paints. Mainly because it was more economically viable, I could afford to rent studio space in that fabled haven for artists, London's East End.  The ‘Art World’ was beginning to show a little interest in my work. Institutions, notably the Contemporary Art Society, the Mappin Art Gallery, Bradford City Museums, Newlyn Orion, and the Arts Council Collection based at the South Bank Centre, purchased my work.

Following relentless pressure from those nearest but not necessarily dearest, I became a Post and Telegraphic officer in Central London. A good, solid job which did bring regular money but which also threatened to leave me brain dead with the tedium. A colleague, also a postman, advised me to enrol at the London College of Printing to study typography. I seized upon this piece of good advice and emerged, in 1976 after a struggle, clutching a rather meaningless Diploma but with the skills of putting a magazine together with some sense of design. I landed a job at the now defunct Africa Journal Ltd and worked with them at their offices in Tottenham Court Road for nine years, moonlighting to do cover designs, cartoons, and page layouts for other publications.
Apart from paintings, I also worked in sculpture: 'The Struggle’, the production of which was a long drawn out process which involved going to an ashram in Kent, where I found the wood.  The figure was constructed from two pieces of sycamore bolted together under the ropes.  I don’t know why I find natural fibre rope so fascinating, nor can I explain the feelings of reverence which I have towards the ancient sculpture of Africa. The theme, though, was quite clear. I was employed at Africa Journal at the time and was therefore very conscious of the armed struggles being waged by African peoples against the stranglehold of the former colonialist regimes in Europe, and also that it would be a very long time before the grip which Europe has on the African body politic would be broken.  ‘Ei ! Who Are you?’ was also produced during this period with the kind help of a friend who worked as a train driver on the London Underground. The work was inspired by the incredibly beautiful and marvellous piece of invention by Picasso of a gorilla’s head, which he constructed using a toy car.
In 1997 I moved home to Nîmes, in Provence, France. Nîmes is a Roman fortress town with a hot dry climate, dominated by a very impressive arena.  I was established in a studio right in the town centre. The setting was perfect for the next phase of my creative urge.
For a while back in the UK I had been developing the technique of working with pure pigment on canvas, because texture is important to me.  In France, materials and technique were then combined, juggled and spun out in a series of works in paper pulp on steel tubular armatures. 'Ving', 'Petite Micou’ ‘Muraille’ and ‘Crysalis’ are some of these works. Basically, after the construction of a metal armature which was then covered in multiple layers of newspaper to form a tough skin, I slammed on many kilos of thick paper pulp, which I then proceeded to mould into the desired form. The coup de grace was the addition of iron filings. I then sprayed the whole lot with a garden spray. By adding certain chemicals to the water, I was able to control the colour of the rust.
This was a very productive period of experimentation and innovation, during which I learned a great deal about the oxidisation of materials, welding and construction.
I returned to the UK in 2001 and have set about locoating suitable studio space in order to continue with my newly aquired skills.
Frustration with the astronmomical prices of studio space in London have diverted my work into new areas. At this moment in time I am struggling with completion of my first animated film using drawings that were completed in 1996. Einstein a man, for whom I have a high regard, said that there was no such thing as a straight line in physics, the same could apply to life.