I was born in Stellenbosch, South Africa and in 1970, at the age of eight, I moved with my

family to Paris where my father took up a diplomatic post. The following four years had a

lifelong influence on my worldview as we travelled across Europe and my younger brother

and I became enthusiastic honorary guides to the Louvre for all the international guests

frequenting our home.

We moved back to Stellenbosh where I completed my education, studying Medicine in the

1980’s. Art classes for teenagers in the 1970’s was limited to painting and my colour

blindness soon discouraged me from making yet a another brownish still life. I went on to

practise as a doctor across four continents and several countries, specialising in rural and

emergency medicine after settling in Australia in 2007..

I dabbled in wood fettling and clay modelling in my 20’s and in the early 1990’s I had the

good fortune of meeting David Kemp, “the bronze man” in New Zealand’s Hawkes Bay. He

introduced me to the wonders of the lost-wax technique, mold making and metal casting. As

a self-taught sculptor and humanist, I naturally explored the human figure, experimenting

with a variety of materials including clay, ceramic, wire, bronze, aluminium and glass. It is

only in the last few years that I have had the privilege of attending workshops in Europe with

leading contemporary figurative artists from the US, Athens, Florence and Barcelona.

As one of my mentors recently suggested, I somehow seem to have had a reversed

education in sculpture: learning the final process of bronze casting before being exposed to

the basic principles of modelling. Either way, I have enjoyed a creative freedom, honed my

skills in multiple media and I am now integrating this with my expanded knowledge, working

at home in a well established studio with facilities for clay modelling, direct metal work,

ceramics and small scale lost-wax metal casting.

“Sculpture gives me some sort of a voice. I’m no poet, painter or musician and it is through

sculpture that I can observe, feel, explore, reflect, mirror and materialise life in and around

me as I experience it.”