I've worked with a variety of visual media over the years including: pencil; oils; watercolours; and acrylics. My favourite being watercolour.

 

Over the last few years, and largely becuase of time constraints, I have concentrated my efforts on producing digital media which you'll find on my image site EyeInvent. The digital art I create falls largely into two areas: fictional landscapes and abstract art. My enjoyment is in form, shape, and colour.

 

I am currently working on a project that marries my visual work with words.

 

 

 

 

Photography

It was a trip to the Welsh mountains in my mid teens that kick-started my love of photography. I had set out with a cheap plastic camera and promised myself that if I came back with some snaps I was happy with, I'd invest in a camera that would allow me to explore the medium further. I was fortunate that the landscape was so powerful that even a novice would return with some great images - I was hooked.

 

I tend not to use a tripod as, for my style of photography, the moment of best light passes so quickly. I often shoot into the light and enjoy saturated colours and high contrast.

 

You'll find my photographs at EyeInvent.

 

 

 

Writing

 

 

I will be spending more time on my writing over the coming year. A few examples of which you will find below.

 

The Burial of Georgio Sánchez

 

The actions of the inhabitants of a small town, Pueblo del Pocito, on the night preceding a funeral mass are inextricably linked to those of the passengers on a bus due to arrive in the town the following morning. The story explores the central themes of desire and deceit as the burial of a stranger, Georgio Sánchez, alters all their lives.

 

 

 

The chronologies of events, combined with the characters' recollections of past incidents, create a lyrical evocation of their passions, self-sacrifice, and necessary deceit...

 

"Highly individual and imaginative…" Michael Berkeley

"Wonderfully written and beautifully poetic…" Bloomsbury

"Written with sensitivity and delicacy…" Flambard Press

"Full of marvelous things…" Martin Secker and Warburg

"Bold and innovative…" Picador

 

Poetry

 

A few examples of my poetry follow below...

 

Kite

 

By causeway ruffed with reeds
Below stone circle windowed space,
Sifting sights in syllables of touch you taste.
Your one hand to the other grasp
The weathered chair with wondered soul
In sight of sail
Across the inlet water fresh
In take of air
As red against the blue below
Shifts as one with swaying corn
On land that rises to the east,
That swells as to a single figure small
As speck upon a sea of ice,
As mizzenmast in ocean squall I stand,
Fists tight around the hilt,
Listing back against the wrench of wind,
Taut the tendril slices clean the air
As paper cuts the softened skin within
Sun strikes the canvas high
Whilst shadow on the earth dilates,
A pool of weighted soil dark,
The strand of fluid mooring brakes
Crisp upon the ears.

In Search of the Simple Language

 

In search of the simple language,
That covers close
Soft to the skin
Like fresh cotton sheets
Ruffling in a breeze that later rest,
Beneath you.

As Light

Darkness,
Where breath breaks the sound of thought.
Comfort held
Comfort gained,
In secret wonder where such life you give,
In innocence your love remains,
As of a place of hope,
As of a favoured time,
As light you have become,
As morning bathed in sun.

 

April

 

This deep red wine
From nineteen summers past
Where hands who picked the grapes we drink
Grow old and die.
Those strangers' lives change we
That have no common time or space with them
And yet we sip so sweetly such collective taste
That melts, that warms, that drowns our hearts
In one another's love we flow
And in such humid comfort gain
A key I hold, cool cold to skin
Which opens wide this place where you may rest
When you may choose
To come, to stay, to be, in love,
And face to face our bodies meet
In tender trembling tactile trust
The scent of you has filled this place,
In day, in night, on pillowcase.

 

The Plumb Red Swivel Chair

 

And on the plum red swivel chair,
Seated hopeful self,
That by some miracle you press a Spanish coin,
That drops with weight into a place
Where conversations brought by foreign tours began.

This time of mourning,
Sun spreading through the study window pain,
Warming home that is forever open,
Forever yours to claim.

This time of hearing
Precious voice across the land,
That fills this body, that calms this mind.

This time has been, will come
But is not for the moment still
That creeps
Like snail upon the day,
That is a scrap of ceaseless while
Until our meeting,
Comfort gained
I am, a part, in you, my hope
Again.

 

The Scent of You

 

The other side,
Whilst you are gone,
Has briefly lost the scent of you.
I cannot touch the place
That through a sense of flowered balm,
Could raise my soul
Within such shortened space,
In days of absent warmth.

 

 

 

Music

I first started playing the piano when I was six. Every morning I walked to my school with my aunt who taught there. She encouraged me to practice and has continued to support me in my creative activites ever since. I have composed for voice, piano, four piece bands, and orchestra.

 

A taster of my work as a composer and musician follows. All music is under copyright.

 

Sand and Rain

 

Sand and Rain starts with a Moorish piano solo before developing into a fully fledged Latin instrumental.

 

Sand represents my love of heat, journeying, and distant cultures, the place my heart is most at home, while Rain represents the Northern European culture of his birthplace, the place my mind is most at ease.

 

Sand and Rain shows a number of influences in my music. The pianist, composer, and improviser Keith Jarrett, has been a major musical influence in my musical output and the opening section of Sand and Rain is a homage to him. Sand and Rain makes reference to the musical traditions of north Africa, Latin America, and Europe, and by so doing, reflects my own eclectic musical tastes.

Extract:

Full Version:

A Silent Movie

 

A Silent Movie, a complex and personal work, was composed between 1986 and 1988, runs to forty minutes, and is read and heard concurrently.

 

My creative development by 1987 had led me to increasingly include written text as an integral part of my musical output. In 1988 I decided to embark on a work which would be ambitious in both content and style.

 

A Silent Movie contains a broad range of musical forms from acapello singing, jazz, classical, and spoken word, to the musical use of ambient sounds. A Silent Movie was to become the first 'audiotexs', and was technically very demanding as the advent of affordable digital audio had not yet arrived (all sound material was cut and pasted using traditional magnetic media technology).

A Silent Movie runs to forty minutes and is read and heard concurrently. Below is a short extract from the text of A Silent Movie, which appears towards the final stages of the work. A number of themes appear in this extract that are developed throughout the work: the life cycle, human cloning, and aesthetics.

 

Extract:

Extended Extract:

Listen Up

 

Listen Up was composed in an intense period of musical creativity when I laid hands on a powerful music sequencer for the first time in the late 1980's. My main goal was to create music using computer software which maintained the human touch and feel of swing. The challenge was to use the tools of technology to encourage, not disable instinct.

 

Extract:

On The West Side

 

This digital recording of On The West Side, was recorded during 1997, when digital technology first became widely available as an affordable option for musicians and composers.

 

Extract:

Full Version:

My Family

 

Songwriting is an instinctive process. Music and words develop hand in hand, one expression feeds the other. My Family was written as a remembrance of times past. The song is about me as a young boy and reflects the confusion and contradictions of a young person's experience of family.

 

Extract:

Our Town

 

Our Town was a community arts project that ran throughout the year 2000 and consisted of: the exhibition Our Town, My Space; the Our Town 'audiotexs'; and the Our Town booklet.

 

Review the full list of credits for Our Town

 

The following three tracks are taken from the music composition element of the arts project. An audiotexs is an audio recording of music, speech, and ambient sounds forming an integrated whole and where all elements are treated musically.

 

I began work on the audiotexs Our Town in December 1997. Over the following two years I interviewed hundreds of people for the project, and made thousands of ambient sound recordings. Our Town is a four movement work which runs to seventy minutes.

 

From infancy to old age, bankers and beekepers, mothers and fathers, rich, poor, happy, angry, sad. All are part of Our Town. Some tell of their passions, of those who have left and indelible mark on their lives, others of their journey as it nears its end. From morning to night, through sun, wind and rain, through every season of the year, you will hear sounds from familiar and unexplored places.

 

Our Town Opening (short extract):

Our Town Opening (long extract):


Not So Long Ago (extract):


Where I Want To Be (extract):


Where I Want To Be (full version):


Full Circle (extract):


Full Circle (extended extract):