Welcome to my blog

Welcome to my blog. It is my intention to post my thoughts, feelings and pictures in the following entries so that I can share with you the journey I tread everyday within my work, but more importantly why.

I am very thankful to many people for supporting me in my work, my wife Lizzie, my mother Elaine and in particular my friend Philip Streeting who showed me the way to start to open my mind and develop the creative thought process. I continue to build on this on a daily basis, meeting Philip was a breath of fresh air. struggling for many years to be able to develop my work outside of a pure craft based foundation and to move into mixed media to express my thoughts has enabled me to be totally free to explore something which has mostly been left unexplored, my mind, thoughts and feelings. Putting these ideas into my work is exhilarating to say the least.

Some of you may know of me from the various wood working forums. These are a great place to share and belong to a community that can help develop your technical skills in the craft of woodturning. Unfortunately I have found that they can also stifle my ability to create works that are outside of the round and brown.

Working outside of this restrictive thought process is the place I feel most comfortable to be in as it challenges the way I perceive myself, the works I produce, the methods I use to produce them and the philosophy behind them.

It should be pointed out by myself very early on in my blog that I am passionate about wood. It's smell, workability, spectrum of colours and grain patterns. It is a beautiful medium to work with in its natural state. I continue to work within this sphere and will continue to do so. However to limit myself to only being allowed to work with wood in it's natural state, without, colour, texture or the inclusion of other media thus allowing me to express my thoughts and ideas does nothing for me or my ability to advance and develop my work. It only takes away from me the small amount of precious time I have on this earth to express myself.

It will be a while before I post again as I am off on holiday to spend quality time with my family. I will be taking my camera and sketch book as the North Cornish coast is a beautiful place and is full of inspiration, or not, I guess it depends if I can see it!!