An abstract image created using Procreate on an iPad
The black spheroid forms seem to be holding the smaller red spherical form in suspension between them. The proximity of the black spheres gives the small gap between them the feeling of some form of concentrated energy.
A geometric abstract painting produced using Procreate on an iPad with an Apple Pencil. This is a particularly useful way to create artwork, as the combination of tools lend themselves to particularly intuitive and spontaneous creations.
A sketch created using Procreate on an iPad.
The sketch shows a bell. Inside the bell, in the place where the clapper should be, is a hanging man.
The image came to me spontaneously while I was looking at a bell. I think that part of the idea may be that the bell marks out time, announcing the hours,and therefore marks out life.
Bells are also tolled to mark out death.
This work is from a series that explores the generation of complexity from simplicity by the interaction of simple forms to create complex forms.
This work was exhibited in Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery over the summer of 2023.
A quick sketch from the imagination drawn using Procreate on an iPad with an Apple Pencil.
I find that drawing quick sketches with no particular end in mind is an excellent way to open up to new possibilities. Obviously the same themes and styles keep cropping up, but often with minor variations that move the sketches off into different and new directions. That’s the nature of evolution of course – small changes over time gradually end up creating something new.
I’ve drawn quite a few sketches of people or strange creatures that seem to have a wheel instead of legs. Haven’t managed to work out why yet.
A print taken from a digital animation of expanding circles and rays.
The work is related to my interest in both art and science, and is inspired by the concept of the expansion of the universe.
I’ve been interested in both art and science most of my life. In fact in my youth (over fifty years ago) my ambition was to be an astronomer. I even constructed my own astronomical telescope, including grinding the parabolic mirror, when I was a teenager.
A digital sketch of a person on stilts. The stilts have wheels.
Stilt walkers have been an occasionally recurring theme in my work since about 1975.
A bizarre sea creature created digitally in Procreate on an iPad. The shape of the sea creature is based on the number six, as the image was created as part of an exercise in which I sketched several images on my iPad based on the numbers between zero and nine. The concept behind the exercise was that by having to take into account the restraints of including a number in each image I would be forced to work with forms or shapes that I might not think up straight from my imagination.
When creating the sketch I was attempting to produce a bizarre, weird and sinister image. The result looks as though it owes a debt to surrealism, dada and the symbolists.
A digital image based on Marcel Duchamp’s Dada artwork, Fountain. Fountain is a ready-made in the form of a pissoir. The version of Fountain in the image is in Tate Modern in London (Duchamp created several versions of the work using different pissoirs. The original version no longer exists).
In this work a spider is trapped in the pissoir in the same way that spiders are trapped in baths.
The spider hopefully adds an extra touch of humour to a work that is already humourous. The humour partly resides in the fact that it’s unusual to see a spider where you don’t expect to see one (in an artwork), but at the same time the spider is exactly where you’d expect to see one (trapped in a piece of bathroom sanitary ware).
I’m a frequent visitor to Tate Modern, and whenever I look at Duchamp’s Fountain I’m struck by how esthetically pleasing the form of Fountain is. I’m not sure whether or not Duchamp thought this himself or whether he chose the pissoir with no esthetic considerations involved.
A monochrome sketch, created using Procreate on an iPad, depicting a striding figure.
The work is from the imagination and was created spontaneously with no specific concept in mind.
Titled Number Two in a Series, this is part of a series of prints based on images of numbers drawn in Procreate on an iPad.
This is an example of digital abstract art, created in Procreate on an iPad using an Apple Pencil.
The brushes in software such as Procreate and Adobe Fresco are getting better all the time, allowing for much more spontaneous and expressive work than was ever possible in the past. The expressiveness of the medium is now such that I think that the results can legitimately be classed as paintings rather than just digital art.
A depiction of the concept of a superorganism.
A superorganism is the name given to such things as colonies of insects in which the members of the colony act together so that the whole colony functions as though it is a single entity, and in which the individual members of the colony are probably not viable to survive alone.
In the image hundreds (or maybe thousands – I lost count) of ants swarm across a rock and form into the shape of a huge single ant.
The subject of the image reflects my interest in both art and science.
Below is a detail of the work to show the appearance of the individual ants close-up.
The image was created in Affinity Designer .
This work is a an animation composed of overlapping identical grids of hexagons rotating relative to each other.
The piece works on a similar principal to Moiré patterns, however the results are made more complex by the inclusion of simple computer algorithms that make the patterns in the grids interact with each other so that, for instance, where black areas overlap each other they turn white.The work is a relatively fast and dynamic work from the series. Others are slower and more meditative.
The work is from a series that explores the generation of complexity from simplicity and is ultimately concerned with the visualisation of the basic underlying nature of the universe (which by its nature must be very simple) and the way that it gives rise to the immense complexity that we see around us.
A quick sketch of a man on stilts. He has a stilt fastened to each leg and is holding two further stilts.
I’ve been drawing people on stilts on and off for a long time. I think my first one was about fifty years ago.
This work is a slow moving animation that repays close attention. At first you may think that the animation isn’t working, but after three or four seconds you will notice the changes that are occurring to the complex inner structure of the work.
It is composed of overlapping identical grids of hexagons rotating relative to each other.
Simple algorithms make the black and white areas on the grids interact with each other so that, for instance, where black areas overlap they turn white.
The work is deliberately slow to give it a meditative quality. Other works in the same series are faster and give a more dynamic effect.
The work is part of a series called In the Beginning that explores the generation of complex patterns from simple patterns or forms as a metaphor for the creation of complexity within the physical universe from what must by definition be extremely simple beginnings.
A sketch of a leaping male figure with antlers.
I’ve drawn several images featuring men who have antlers growing from their heads. They are something to do with the concept of alpha males, or males who try to pass themselves off as alpha males. Linked to concepts of freedom and over-reaching ambition.
This print shows a dandelion seed head, or dandelion clock, with one of the seeds in flight. The seed resembles a human figure.
The image could be symbolic of freedom, although the slightly sinister nature of the image makes this ambiguous.
An image of a swarm of ants forming the shape of one giant ant.
The image is intended to convey the scientific concept of the superorganism, where the individual members of an animal community (often insects such as bees, wasps or ants) cannot exist as individuals but have to function as part of a larger unified communal entity.
The concept of the superorganism is similar to the concept of the hive mind. The hive mind is perhaps more closely identified with neural activity rather than physical activity, and in human society is associated with the concepts of collective consciousness, group think and other thought processes. Hive mind activities such as group think are not necessarily positive.
The work reflects my interest in science, evolution, the natural world and the environment. It is based on a conncept and image that I created in the 1990s for the Guardian newspaper.
Some people argue that human society is a superorganism, generally on the grounds that we live in an incredibly complex society that is full of specialisation of roles, and that society would fall apart if some of these roles were to fail to function. This definition however doesn’t take into account one of the prerequisites of a superorganism, which is that the individual organisms within the superorganism can’t survive alone. Humans can easily survive even if our complex society collapses – there are people all around the world doing that very thing right now.