In ‘normal’ times I spend half of each year working aboard Expedition Cruise ships and the rest of the year producing art work in my studio at home in Old Town, Hebden Bridge

I studied zoology at the University of Liverpool and then began work as a wildlife artist and mural painter at Chester Zoo. I then travelled, lived and worked in East Africa for a year and a half in my twenties. In Uganda I illustrated a guide book to Kibale Forest National Park and did numerous murals. On return to the Uk I gained a Masters in Natural History Illustration from the Royal College of Art in London. I have worked as a wildlife guide, zodiac driver and expedition leader in remote regions since 1999, visiting the Antarctic peninsula and South Georgia annually in the Austral summer and then heading north to cruise the shoreline of the UK, Norway and the Arctic, swapping penguin sightings for polar bears, and sketching, photographing and learning about the lives of the creatures I see along the way.