I attended Swakeleys school in Ickenham Middlesex, art was my favourite subject when approaching my 14th Birthday and being my last year at the school in 1945, the school governors offered to fund me a place at the Slade School of Art but being one of a family of seven and WW2 just ending it wasn't thought to be a good way to earn a living, my dad gave me a Kodak Brownie box camera and later built me a darkroom in the garden since then photography has been a keen interest of mine and has supported my interest in art.In the late 70's I tried my hand at oil painting starting with 'Painting by numbers' and went on from there during that time I met Dennis Frost the portrait artist, his medium was mainly pastels and he created wonderful portraits he was very generous with his time and gave me much good advice, mainly "take your glasses off" as I tended to be a bit too precise, he sadly died in in 1982, I still have happy memories of him and his advice made several attempts to try pastels but it didn't work out, In 1988 all thoughts of painting had to be put on holdas I started my own electronics company and as any entrepreneur will know very time-consuming undertaking, however by 2004 I was able to find time to start attending portrait drawing classes for two hours a week, in 2012 on my 80th birthday the staff in my company presented me with an ultimatum "If you don't sell the company we are all going to leave" wow what a wonderful birthday present, I didn't need telling twice, so I sold the company we shared the returns and everyone soon found new jobs which then left me free to paint but this time trying to master the pastels more or less using them in the same way that I would use oil paint. for the last two years have seen the onset of AMD in both eyes so will be taking Dennis Frost's good advice and take a softer approach and see what happens.