British cartoonist based in Brussels on the run from the corporate world.
My beautiful friend Caroline asked me to paint a photo of Plymouth Harbour (near where she now lives) for her birthday. I finally finished it at the beginning of this year, making it the last painting I did before I started suffering from RSI.
St Pauls and Millennium Bridge were very close to my old office so I used to visit them often, and I love this view from the south side of the river.
After going through a somewhat traumatizing break-up, I picked up my paints for the first time in ages and did a copy of a card I’d bought in Greenwich market. It started badly (I did the island in the middle first), but I really like how the background turned out, and in a fit of enthusiasm I went out and bought another 5 canvases when I finished it which I have still yet to use!
After living in Hong Kong for a year or so I decided it was time to go back to the U.K. (for a variety of reasons none of which make any sense now). I got a job working for a large technology consulting firm which shall remain nameless but they did send you to Chicago for 2 weeks ‘training’ which was amazing.. 
(2010)
While living in Hong Kong I started doing landscape and cityscape sketches, always with a couple of dragons lurking in the distance..
After doing my Msc at Imperial College, I started work in Hong Kong for an engineering consultancy firm. I did a number of drawings during this time (mostly of dragons which I am obsessed with) but the only painting I did was during Artjam in 2009.
I took Artjamming more seriously than most (Hugh’s Easter Island painting was hilarious), and quite like the final product:
Whilst at uni I did hardly any drawing or painting, I was too busy concentrating on my undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering at Leeds University. After this course I did a year at JiaoTong university in Shanghai studying Mandarin and got somewhat obsessed with doing self portraits…
This is a sample of artwork I did whilst at school.. more than (ahem) 10 years ago now. It was part of my art AS level coursework. I used to draw photos of my friends then simplify them into more abstract pictures.
I have escaped the corporate rat race!
Well perhaps escaped is the wrong word given I did not get to do a dramatic final resignation speech at work, “I’m resigning because this place is a waste of my time and my talent!!” cue sweeping all the papers off my desk and a dash for the exit, and I don’t think anybody is looking for me, desperately pleading for my return to the corporate world. In fact I ended up scuttling out, shrugging apologetically that I needed some time off work to properly heal my arm, which aggravatingly has been out of action for nearly 6 months due to an overuse injury (RSI) mainly due to the type of data-heavy spreadsheet work I was previously doing.
But in any case, I have escaped. Not quite unharmed, but with (most) of my mental facilities intact. For how long, I do not know. It will all depend on how long I can lay low at my parents’ house in Brussels without raising their suspicions that “Aha! You can type again! You must apply for every job going or else you will become a burden on society (and not to mention us) and we will give you up to THE RAT AUTHORITIES!!”
Which is of course a perfectly valid point, and I do not want to become a burden on anybody, but after not being to use my arm for any of the things that I like doing for so long, I do not want to go back to creating impeccable spreadsheets quite yet.
So. While I am laying low in my island paradise hideout also known as Belgium, I intend to become an ARTISTE.
