Post GCSE, I went to Stroud College FE to do the GNVQ in Art and design, and following that I did the Foundation BTEC, three years overall 1999-2002. This led me onto my degree in Fine Art painting at Wimbledon School of Art 2002-2005 ( now College of Art). I was very much into painting and it was a large part of my self directed practice throughout my degree. However, never fully satisfied with it, I played around with video and animation (albeit in an exceptionally low-fi manner) and my degree show was a 3 part video projection installation.

On leaving Wimbledon I set myself up in a live work work space in East London and tried to continue a painting practice. This didn't work out so well, but after a couple of years I had finally settled down into a practice, working in a separate studio to where I lived, and I managed to produce a body of work (paintings and videos) and in 2008 this culminated in a small solo exhibition in a gallery in Stoke Newington. During the early part of this period, I also volunteered and interned for several art fairs and galleries - mostly in technician roles - these included Zoo and Frieze fairs, and Rachmanioff's Unit and IBID Projects galleries. However I wasn't particularly enthralled by the gallery system and realised that I had studied art because I enjoyed the practice rather than administration of it!

Shortly after the exhibition in Stoke Newington, due to an issue that involved having to leave the studio space where I had been painting, I stopped painting for practical reasons and although I did spend some time looking for a new space, I eventually consciously stopped wanting to have a practice at all -there's two many theoretical reasons to go into here, but put simply I'd talked myself into a dead end with it. There was also the fact that it took a great deal of my time and money (all outgoings, and no incomings!) to continue painting. At the time I was working full time at Bloomsbury auctions as well as going to the studio several evenings a week, as well as on the weekends, so it was taking a lot of my time up….

Any way, just after that I made the decision to do an MA as well as move out of London. In 2009 I decided to do the MA in Graphic Arts at UWE, 2009-2011, with intention of getting a graphic design job off the back of it - in short, however, it was quite an expensive way to discover I wasn't particularly a graphic designer! However, the course allowed me a lot of freedom (which is why they define it as graphic arts rather than graphic design course) and I began to experiment (again) with video and animation. I basically spent a lot of my time learning software - specifically Adobe's After Effects and Maxons Cinema 4d in order to have a skill base with which to come out of the MA with. (I also used to the time to investigate more theoretical ideas which were a hangover from my fine art practice and were also relevant to what was essentially me going from an physical to a digital practice.) As a result, I discovered that I could try and carve out some sort of career within the area of motion graphics. So I set about producing these: http://vimeo.com/album/2040940 which were part of my final MA project. I then dedicated my focus on trying to find work within this field of motion graphics and animation.

After finishing my MA I knew that I wanted to be back in London and that the job opportunities were here. Within six months of moving back to London I had managed to find six months of work with Realisation, a marketing company producing in-store animated content for the retail sector. This was essentially a six month paid internship which in all honesty I had blagged my way into! Although it didn't work out in the long term, I did learn an incredible amount, both in terms of technical animation skills and in terms of work flows and how to manage and deal with projects. After this period I was still convinced that I wanted to work in-house with a company - have a salary and all the rest of it - but after several months of unsuccessful job hunting I decided that I should try freelancing. And so after spending some time taking on small low, or unpaid projects, and building up a portfolio of work, I am now working regularly as freelance animator mainly with Catch Creative.co.uk and Dandelion-Burdock.com. I am also with an agency, Purple Consultancy, who place me on assignments with various design firms where I either work in-house or remotely on projects. As is the nature of being a freelancer, I will have periods of work and periods without, therefore I also work, when and if I need to, on zero hour contract at the V&A as gallery assistant. Last year between April and the beginning of December was very good with number of projects rolling constantly in, and it was first year that I can say that I have made something close to a living of a career in the creative industry as a freelancer . This year I'll be hoping to expand on the number of companies that I work with and the number of projects I work on.