I grew up with my Mum, Dad, brother and sister as a close family. My mum and sister are very artistic so we would often go to museums and galleries and walk in the English countryside.
For my ninth birthday my parents gave me and my brother an Amstrad CPC 6128, with not just a tape drive but a disk drive too! This was my first venture into making pixel art. This advanced to making more complex art and animation projects and even my own front-end operating system in BASIC for my BBC B computer at the age of 11. The real advance though was when I got a Commodore Amiga 500 with Deluxe Paint 3 for my 13th birthday. My walls were filled from top to toe with full-page images and adverts for computer games from the latest game magazines. Pixel-by-pixel, I used to try to recreate these images using Deluxe Paint 3 and went on from there making Amiga demo-scene style animations, and coding graphics mostly for fun.
I studied at university in the remote seaside town of Aberystwyth in Wales and have an MSc in Computer Science, where I coded in Java, and focused on the use of neural networks. Working in data, technology and marketing for most of my career, I have always had a passion for art having come from an artistic family. Seemingly, like so many generative artists, I enjoy playing the guitar and used to play bass guitar in a band as a teenager which was a lot of fun. Mostly I now play guitar to relax as a break from intensive coding rather than publicly and I enjoy listening to an eclectic mix of music whilst I code, ranging from Morcheeba to Guns & Roses and from J.S. Bach to the Beastie Boys!
After university I took a year travelling around the world seeing some incredible sights and really trying to understand the cultures. Probably my two favourite places to visit were Indonesia and New Zealand. On arrival back in the UK with quite a lot of debt but a whole stack of memories, I went to work for an IT company but not as a developer, in the sales and marketing team. The reason behind this decision was a desire to work as part of a team and the opportunity to network with clients. I have been involved in web development and UX in my most recent job roles and started making generative art back in 2020 after various requests and commissions from friends and family.
When the lockdown hit in the UK and I was unable to go out and visit clients, this unexpected pandemic allowed me more time to focus on my art and ultimately led to my decision to pursue generative art as a full-time career.
In some ways this was a gamble for a 43 year old but a risk my family and I were willing to take. Put simply, my career goals are to continue making art that I enjoy, I feel like I am only just getting started on this journey and have lots more ideas floating around in my mind to commit to code. One day I would love to have my own solo exhibition in a renowned gallery and to have a huge animated piece exhibited in a public space. Whilst I am working on these goals, in the short term I hope to inspire others to create their own art and to raise the profile of generative art among more traditional collectors. As a member of a few Discord groups I regularly chat with other creative coders and both give and take second opinions from a select group whose judgement I trust.
My first NFT 'Ripple Effect' was made using Pico-8 and my second, 'Dripping Pixels' has been my profile picture ever since August 2021. What I love about Pico-8 is that it is so restrictive. Because you are working with a 128 x 128 grid and only 16 colours you have to work on pushing the grid to it's limits. I enjoy making Pico-8 tweet carts, where I use 280 characters or less to make a generative work. I was already starting to make work in P5.js when FXHash was set up, for example with 'Generative Flowers'. Due to this experience, I was able to create project #100 on that platform and have really enjoyed making P5.js work ever since. My latest piece of work was a collaboration with Paper Buddha, where we spent three months creating generative Paper Mandalas. Mandalas dating back to the 4th century are arguably one of the original generative art types, along with Roman mosaics which I like to class at the original pixel-art!
Being asked to create a piece as a tribute to the late Herbert W. Franke along with some of the generative art pioneers like Frieder Nake and Vera Molnar and more recent prominent artists like Casey Reas, Mario Klingemann and Zancan is right up there as one of my greatest successes. Also having separate works selected by both Kate Vass, and Paris Hilton for their curated shows at NFT Liverpool this Summer have been the highlights of my artistic career. My biggest success, however, has been creating a loving family home with my wife and two children who support me on my artistic journey.
I have made more than enough mistakes in life, but genuinely feel that every decision, right or wrong has got me to the position I am in now, so no regrets!
