Biography

After a degree in economics and a few years working in the City, Brian abandoned all chance of a sensible career to paint.

His first portrait was exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery, London after which he studied at Heatherly School of Art, Chelsea, gaining the first Distinction in Portraiture awarded by the college and winning the prestigious Elizabeth Greenshields Award.

He went on to exhibit more paintings in the National Portrait Gallery, as well as the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Discerning Eye, the Garrick Milne at Christie’s, Chelsea Arts Club, the London Sketch Club, etc.

Brian has now been painting for over 25 years and sculpting for 10. He moves freely between life and imagination and resists mass producing after a style.

Amongst other things he is currently working on a series of stone sculptures of women and a large history painting about education.

Brian recently returned to the UK after many years in Burgundy and is now based in Devon.

“I paint from life, from memory, from imagination. A life painting takes a few days, the imaginative paintings much longer. The ideas evolve and deepen and layer as I go on. The result is a sort of psycho-drama. They are meant to provoke stories, not tell them. Less what they mean, more what they could mean.

Part emotional manipulation, part propaganda, they are all meant to lead you up the hill. A continuation of the great European tradition of thinking with pictures.”

“I direct carve in wood and stone. I just start: a hammer, a chisel, a block. Experience has taught me to work with the material, not just to impose my ideas on it. The individual block has its own strengths, weaknesses, tendencies. Its own character.

After 2 or 3 days of getting to know each other an idea develops, it reveals itself during the process. By the sound of the hammer and chisel, or the way it cuts. From these cues ideas develop and details suggest themselves. It is a slow process of reductive thinking in three dimensions, of finding the drawing hidden in the stone.”