I was born in East Africa in 1957, and spent an idyllic childhood in Nairobi and Mombasa. Eleven years later my family moved to the Middle East and I was sent to boarding school in Surrey, England. On leaving school I attended St. Martin's School of Art in London, fully intending to pursue a career in art. However I returned to Bahrain instead and it was not until almost twenty years later when my four children were growing up that I was able to start my career as a professional artist.

My first exhibition in Bahrain in 1992 was a great success and all subsequent shows in Bahrain and Dubai proved to be equally rewarding. The consensus of opinion among those who appreciate my work is that my images generate a satisfying sense of serenity, of contentment in seclusion, of reflection in stillness. Often viewers will remark that they feel a strong desire to be in the places I paint, to experience the painted scene three-dimentionally. This response from viewers has always been greatly rewarding on a deeply personal level for it gives me a sense of shared vision.

For me, self-expression through art is an all-consuming objective. I feel driven by this creative urge within me, a compulsion that all artists can relate to. The quality of my life is contingent upon being able to paint and to perfect my art.

My childhood experience of East Africa was so profound that even three decades later my memories of it remain intensely vivid. My recollections of the vibrant light and brilliant colours of that landscape invariably surface time and again in my paintings. I was to discover a very similar ambiance in the landscape of the Arabian Gulf. From my many years of living there I developed a great appreciation for the Islamic aesthetic which manifests itself in Islamic architecture and design. This influence is immediately obvious in my work.