About me

Hi
Thank you for looking at my website and hopefully you like a few of my paintings.

I started drawing from around the age of 5 or 6. I vaguely remember being at my grandmas and drawing a cowboy. The whole family loved it as you would expect for any child.
But there was something that grabbed me, It was probably one of my first pleasures to experience.

My grandma was good at drawing and would always encourage me. We would even sit together and draw. I remember we both drew Arnold Schwartzenegger (she loved action heroes, Arnie and Bruce Lee stick in my mind the most) one day and hers was excellent.

Around the of 13, I joined a new school and the art teacher there seemed to treat me a little differently to the other pupils. Encouraging me to work harder at my art skills. He even signed me up to the portrait class that was for the 16 year olds. It was a wonderful feeling to be around “the big boys”.

I then went on to art college but couldn’t really submerge myself into it. There was too much I wasn’t interested in. I just wanted to draw. I tried painting but hated it.
I would draw a nice picture and then ruin it with paint.

A few years later I decided to do some sketches whilst watching tv.
I would do around 3 or 4 a night and it somehow felt like I hadn’t wasted the evening watching tv even though that was my intention. The sketching was just an excuse.

I’m not sure why, having hated it previously, but I decided to do another painting.
Being a huge Stanley Kubrick fan, I chose to paint Jack Nicholson from The Shining. The famous “Here’s Jonny” scene.
It was bad but nowhere near as bad as my college attempts at painting and was certainly good enough for me to be pleased with. So I did another and another. Before long I was painting a lot and have rarely drawn since.
I became obsessed with the art world and art museums and slowly started to gain my feet.
I had a close artistic friend who would spark that fire inside me. Give me that need to create, partly for her approval, but also because I realised I was now an artist. It was in my blood.

These last few years have been my most productive. I now paint every day.
I can paint anything but when it comes to my own needs, I need to feel grabbed by an image or an emotion or a person. If I see something or someone that sparks that passion, I know “I have to paint” it or them.
I’ve recently ventured into nude painting. It was never really something that interested me until I saw an image that I had to paint. It was quite revolutionary.
I’ve always loved faces, hands and feet due to the complexities. There’s nowhere to hide really. Choosing to paint a nude was like an extension of the hand. No clothes to mask the detail and there were more facets to show intensity, passion and sensuality. It really showed me why the body form is so highly regarded in the art world and there’s nothing like capturing the real person.

So I would say I’m a self taught artist but there has been some slight tutoring along the way.
My memory tells me that my grandma gave me the most important piece of advice. “draw what you see”. It seems obvious but I think most people will look at an image and then when their eyes move away from it they use memory.
For example, you’re drawing a face and see where the eye is. So you add an eye.

Instead of adding an eye you need to add the lines. Forget that it’s an eye and see where the points are on the face. The curve of the eyelid. Where does the curve peak etc.

Thank you for reading and feel free to get in touch for any ideas you would like to discuss.
I’m always looking for new ventures, new images and new people to collaborate with either as a subject and model, or perhaps you’re an artist and would like to do some kind of companion piece together.

For any modelling, commissions or collaborations, please contact me below

All the best
James