A portrait can be more than a likeness. It can hold a relationship, a moment, a particular sense of a person — or tell a story that goes beyond appearance.

My approach to portraiture extends beyond producing a likeness. I am interested in portraiture as a way of exploring character, identity, relationships and moments of significance, sometimes through the presence of the sitter, and sometimes through references to wider cultural or art-historical narratives.

Working both from life and from photographs, portraits may take the form of a full figure, family groups or head and shoulders. The scale and composition are considered as part of the meaning of the painting, rather than simply as a means of recording appearance.

Art history is often an important point of reference. A portrait might echo the composition or visual language of an earlier painting, allowing the sitter to enter into a different narrative or context. In other works, the reference is less explicit: the painting might attempt to capture a particular moment, psychological state or transformation that cannot be described simply through physical resemblance.

My portraits are therefore conceived as paintings in their own right. The ambition is not simply to reproduce how someone looks, but to make a painting that conveys something of who they are, how they are seen, or what they represent.

I am based in Henley-on-Thames and undertake portrait commissions from life and from photographs in Oxfordshire, Berkshire and the surrounding area.