Born in the south East, I grew up with an interest in narrative and storytelling which I tragically never grew out of it. I excelled in Art and English at school, winning the 'John Downton Award' for mixed media at the age of 18. I continued to study art with The University of the Creative Arts and went on to earn a degree at Nottingham Trent University. Let loose from educational institution, I continue to hone my craft and find my creative way.​​

​

What was your submission for the John Downton Award?

I created 5 framed pages of artwork telling the story of my Great-Grandfather's time at Dunkirk during WW2. I recorded first hand testimony from him recounting his experiences and made that the basis for the artwork, Using paint, inks, pen, pencils, photography, text and image editing to bring the imagery together.​​

​

Inspirations?

I grew up reading a lot of manga, definitely more so than western comic books, so I expect that many of my ideas around narrative presentation and image composition stem from here. The first series that really hooked me was Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist (2001-2010) and after that my fascination grew. Manga is firmly popular worldwide and I love that its an example of physical print media that is widely accessible as well as popular. ​It is a format that nicely bridges the gap between pop culture and authentic artistic expression, blurring the border between 'low' and 'high' art.

​

Another source of inspiration comes from the Japanese game designer Fumito Ueda. He is the mind behind ICO (2001) and Shadow of the Colossus (2005) which are both amongst some of the most influential video games of all time. Ueda's work has a very strong philosophy of minimalism surrounding his work which creates an incredible sense of clarity in his story-telling.