I grew up on the north-east coast of Scotland and spent most of my spare time drawing imaginary people and worlds. The break-up of my family took me to a different school where the art teacher, a sexist bully, made fun of my drawings and I was nicknamed 'the misfit' by pupils and teachers alike.
When I left school, I gave up drawing completely and went travelling, moving from squat to squat for many years. I poured my creative energy and what little money I had into performance and songwriting, recording 10 albums over the next 30 years but was considered too avant-garde and became increasingly frustrated and alienated.
In 2000, out of financial necessity and quite by chance, I found a job assisting a friend with the making and mending of architectural stained glass windows.
Frustrated by the meaningless (and often hideous) designs I was asked to reproduce at work, I slowly became fascinated by the strange beauty and storytelling power of medieval stained glass.
From books, I taught myself to paint and fire imagery onto the glass and eventually bought a sandblaster, a drill and began to explore a multitude of new techniques.
In 2013, I began to focus exclusively on personal work, usually mounted in light boxes like glowing paintings. I found it could be a way out of years of emotional and artistic frustration.
Unlike other stained glass artists, the technical process is less interesting to me than the content ; I want to reach out to people, to seduce, provoke, challenge and inspire them, by linking the characters and stories of the past with our own lived experiences today.
