A serious interest in painting during a summer job in a fire lookout at Bow Summit in Banff National Park, Canada in 1959. This led to a two-year spell in a training college as a mature student, with Art as a main subject on returning to the UK in 1962. A brief teaching job decided him it was not for him and in 1965 with his wife Vera and son Nial, they moved out to Wales to a derelict farmhouse above Deiniolen. The first few years were hard going, working on the house, trying to get established as a painter and also working as a mountain guide. At first the paintings tended to be large in oil or acrylic and of abstract appearance based on geological structures with colours based on musical scales. Gradually they tended towards realism and a number of watercolours were done of mountain scenes, which with a climber‘s eye dictating them said something to fellow climbers in their own language. Some paintings turned out to be popular - after repeating three different versions of Stac an Armin, St. Kilda he decided to get it reproduced as an edition of prints in 1978. As these sold well, Ben Eighe was done the following year and subsequent prints followed.
