| MAIN LOBBY | MURALS | VISIONARY FINE ARTS | GREETING CARDS | BIOGRAPHY | CREDITS |
The Battle of Hastings 1066 is one of the most famous dates in English history when William the Conqueror sacked the Saxon King Harold II. Hastings is also the place where I was fortunate enough to be born. An old world town that sits on the southern coast of England and a perfect place for a young boy of my particular temperament to grow up.
My parents were divorced when I was two so I spent most summer days on the beach with me Mum, swimming in the ocean and building imaginary cars and boats out of pebbles, which my friend David and I would sit in and drive off to faraway lands and have great adventures. I really think that this is how my imaginary world got started.
It was around this time that my mother bought me a small paint box for my birthday. I loved to paint and had so much to draw from. Often we would get up at five in the morning and go out into the country to walk across the misty fields to pick mushrooms for breakfast. It was here I met and talked with the gnomes and faeries for the very first time. I spent a lot of time climbing trees and shooting bows and arrows and even met (or became) Robin Hood for awhile. I would sit in the tall grass on river banks fishing for hours, learning about the many creatures and spirits of the rivers. At night, in darkened rooms, ghosts haunted the old houses in which we lived and many a time I was kidnapped by pirates and dragged off to sea and held for ransom. Reverberations of ancient times echoed everywhere and reflected in every moment.
School seemed to come as bit of an interruption to this fascinating life I was living. Teachers had a hard time getting my attention; they often moved me to the front of the class but I would still spend most of my time looking out the window and day dreaming. They became frustrated, “Oh, Paul just lives in his own world.” I would often hear them say, and I did, but I always felt I was on a mission and my destiny was leading me down a different path. Drawing and painting seemed to come quite naturally to me and it wasn’t long before people started to take notice, which I found quite rewarding.
When I was about six we moved to the midlands, just north of London, to live with my Grandparents in Wellingborough, a rather dismal little town of shoe factories, rows of brick houses and chimney smoke. We then moved to Godmanchester, on the River Great Ouse that would often flood in the winter and we would have to use a row boat to get to our caravan. We then moved to a farm just outside of Huntingdon where I learned to ride and work in the fields. At age fourteen we immigrated to New Brunswick, in eastern Canada, and from there we somehow ended up in Reno, Nevada.
At sixteen I quit high school and moved back to England on my own to attend art school but was rejected due to my young age and lack of credits. One year later I returned to America to finish high school where I was awarded an art scholarship at graduation. Upon completion I moved to Vancouver, Canada, where I lived the life of a struggling artist, doing portraits on the beach and trying to sell paintings to survive. It was about this time when the little people started to appear in my work. I also became involved in Eastern philosophy and meditation, which has been an important part of my life ever since.
Studying the work of the Great Masters has always been a source of inspiration for me and it was now time to go and see their paintings in person, so I decided to bicycle around Europe for a year to paint and visit galleries. I was able to finance this trip mostly by selling the landscapes I was painting along the way to tourists. I have always said this was one of the best years of my life.
When I returned home to England I set up a studio in Eastbourne, Sussex and began to focus on my fantasy paintings. The Van Dyck’s Gallery took all the work I could produce in exchange for just enough money to live on, which was great because it enabled me to continue painting and develop my craft for another year or so.
I then moved to Victoria, BC, Canada and started to sell my work through galleries, mainly The Exposition in Gas Town, Vancouver, a high end gallery where my work really took off and I had a hard time keeping up with the demand.
More recently I moved back to Reno, NV and was offered a mural job in Austria with Animal Artistry. The project took six weeks with a crew of sixteen building mountains and doing taxidermy. It was an amazing experience and it opened my eyes to new directions and possibilities. I continued working with Animal Artistry painting many murals for museums and private trophy rooms. Cabela’s Retail Stores then asked me to do the murals in all the new stores they were building. And up to this point I have painted the murals in seventeen stores around the country, many with my assistant artist and great friend Bob Bucknell.