About Tom

There are two main compulsions in my working life, painting on walls, and pursuing artworks exploring and hopefully promoting 'sustainable development' issues.

My interest in mural painting has something to do with rising to the challenge of working out what wall owners would like painted on their walls, often when they are not sure themselves. And the pressure of people caring about the result, for a small business like a sandwich bar its a potentially ruinous or lucrative situation. For a town council it's high profile public applause or derision. An unpopular mural is simply not an available option.

I like everything about painting on walls, the scale, the texture, the physical exercise, and also the emotional commitment to an image, it's a bit like a community tattoo,

I dug ideas of 'sustainable development' as soon as I read them. From the idea that everyone should creatively address all aspects of their lives to make a more just and clean world, to the idea that if everyone makes continuous small changes to their lifestyle we may just avert ecogeddon without great inconvenience. But what kind of cultural input does it take to persuade people to adjust their habits, and what are the alternatives?

To answer this question most of my environmental based artworks aim to be an exploration what happens if I change my habits as much as persuading other people to change theirs. Habits are not easy to change I find, and the answers are not obvious.

Apart from that I've got a BA Fine Art, Middlesex Poly, MA Art as Environment, Manchester Met Uni, a mural covered house, a vegetable patch, a blossoming collection of water butts and solar cookers, and a nuclear family of 4.