About Joe

My Background

Art has always come naturally to me. I was always drawing from an early age, and throughout school it remained the area where my strongest abilities lay.

After leaving school in 2003, I went on to train at The Merseyside Forum for Painting, Sculpture and Allied Crafts in Liverpool, a unique hands-on training environment based in the historic Bluecoat Chambers, in the former studio of sculptor Tyson Smith.

Rather than following a conventional fine art route, my training was rooted in practical making and traditional craft, with experience in draughtsmanship, painting, restoration, stone carving, clay modelling, mould making, fresco work, and sculptural techniques using materials such as resin and fibreglass.

That broad technical foundation continues to shape how I approach my work today.

How I Work

Whilst many artists naturally develop a strong visual identity of their own, I’ve always been more drawn to the act of creation itself: the challenge of making, problem-solving, and finding the right techniques to bring an idea to life.

In that sense, I’ve perhaps always been as much a technician as an artist, becoming absorbed in the details, thinking several steps ahead whilst instinctively responding to each mark, brushstroke, and decision as the work evolves.

I enjoy clients bringing me their ideas, whether fully formed or loosely imagined. The challenge then becomes interpreting that vision in the most considered way possible, responding to the specific character of the project, the space, the surface and the desired outcome. Sometimes that means using traditional approaches; other times it means adapting materials or techniques to suit the unique demands of the brief.