I was born in Zambia, where my parents had moved for work in the 1950s. During this time they had a brood of 4 boys. When I was 7, my parents decided to return to Edinburgh and thankfully they brought us along for the ride! I must say, learning to wear socks, shoes & coats were quite a shock to the system but I adapted and quickly became Scottish.

Like my father, who was an engineer, I was creative from the very start, always drawing, painting or sculpting. In spite of my dyslexia, which put me off writing for decades, I have also recently started writing children’s stories.

I myself started work as an engineering patternmaker but within a decade found my home at the Edinburgh College of Art. Making unusual furniture and creating of the wall sculptures became a natural progression.

I then discovered welded metal sculpture at night school, and soon hit the front page of the Edinburgh Evening News with a 2.5m high abstract, futuristic, androgenous figure that was showcased in the annual National Galleries exhibition. Nature has long been a favourite of mine and painting polar bears in particular.