Biography

When I was very young I used to watch my eldest brother, Pete, do his technical drawing homework. The fine lines, the exquisite arrowheads, the hand lettering in all-caps… drafted on thick cartridge paper. I wanted to do all that, all day. I set my heart on becoming an architect, but back in those days, girls were discouraged from taking “boys jobs”, so I gave up the dream.

I wanted to go to art college at the end of high school, but given the perceived wisdom that “there’s no money in being an artist”, I accepted a coveted place to study Dip. HCA. It was here I learned how to cook the French classics, drink to excess, develop an eating disorder, fail miserably and eventually drop out.

I was discovered tending bar by a man who needed a graphic designer. From this job I made the career-creating leap into advertising. I ran the Wellington studio of the global ad behemoth, McCann Erickson.

I saved enough money from the ad agency job to travel non-stop for two years. When I left NZ to go on this epic adventure, my youngest brother, Ross, gave me his Leica camera at the boarding gate. This began my love affair with street photography.

Thailand, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, Russia, all of western Europe, and Iceland. By the end of those two years I was broke and yearning to settle in one place: London. I co-founded a design agency and on the weekends painted large portraits as a hobby. My partner at the time was an artist and one day she commented, “Why do you paint? You should just stick to being a designer.”

I stopped painting.

The design agency I co-founded was successful but after ten years as the Creative Director, I decided I needed a change. I accepted a job as Chief Marketing Officer for a tech start-up based in Washington, DC. Unable to get an H1-B visa, I emigrated to Toronto, ON (thanks to being a British commonwealth subject) and commuted to DC for work.

No painting, and not much photography happened in those three years. Just work, work, work. Eventually I got an H1-B visa, so moved to San Francisco. By this time, I was deep in the world of UX/UI design for digital products. My design “canvas” had shrunk from a 78-sheet billboard at the ad agency down to a 1520×760 pixel cellphone screen. From CMYK to RGB. From joyous design to rigid web 2.0 conformity.

I was earning bucketloads but my creative soul was withering.

And then my wife surprise divorced me.

The very first thing I did when my wife left me was to go to Blick Art Supplies on Mission St in San Francisco. I had 18 painting-free years I needed to make up for.

Despite my best intentions of relocating to New York, I moved to Los Angeles. I fell in love with the city - and with the desert, traveling to Joshua Tree, Desert Hot Springs and Palm Springs as often as I could.

The brutal, unrelenting light in LA forces you to look at everything - including yourself - with a forensic eye. It made me want to paint and take photographs.

So that’s what I’m doing now.