ABOUT

My latest painting, Urban Freedom/Wounded), is based upon a strange coincidence of events.
A few years ago, at the BBC 6 Music Festival in Manchester, I got talking to a member of the local choir who were singing with Young Fathers. She was telling me how she looked after injured wild birds (pigeons, gulls etc) & brought them back to health. I always thought I’d like to paint this idea at some point.
Then, early in 2025 I painted a skeletal blackbird to highlight their plight due to global warming. Shortly after this, I was driving through Wolverhampton when I saw a woman carrying a wounded blackbird & making her way through the crowds.
It was surreal & dreamlike – so much so, I wasn’t even sure if it had happened. But it had. And that’s why I felt I had to create this painting.
During the weeks I was working on this piece, events in the UK took a sinister turn with St George’s Cross flags appearing overnight in many towns and cities, mine included. This was followed by the Raise the Colours gathering in London, organised by far-right campaigner, Tommy Robinson (aka Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) and other extremist groups.
Both these events seemed to represent a shift in the atmosphere of this country, with the flags and subsequent demonstration intended to make people of colour (or anyone who didn’t fit in with the far-right narrative) feel intimidated and unwelcome.
Therefore, as I was painting the crowds behind the main figure of the woman and the blackbird, the figures behind subconsciously came to represent these neo-fascist gatherings and created a slight air of menace in my composition. In other words, the main subject now came to represent anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the racism which seems to flow through our streets like an open sewer.
It’s hard to say what the future holds for this country, but as an artist, it’s hard not to respond in some way to what’s going on.
This painting will be on show in the RBSA Friends Exhibition at the RBSA Gallery in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter from Jan 8th until Feb 7th 2026.