I grew up in a village near Northampton, where my father taught me the enormous pleasure to be found in really looking at nature and wildlife wherever it might be. As my youthful ambitions to own a zoo or work with Jane Van Lawick-Goodall didn’t materialise, I turned my love of birds and animals to something a bit more tangible.

Following a Fine Art Foundation course at Northampton School of Art I trained as a landscape architect at Leeds Polytechnic. In 1979 I decided to pursue a career in woodcarving and I was lucky enough to be given a set of old chisels, originally belonging to my grandfather's uncle (father of the poet W H Auden) who had been a cabinet maker in his spare time, also a workbench which had belonged to my grandfather.

My first workshop was in Clerkenwell, London, and I began by selling my carvings at the Apple Market in Covent Garden, before starting to sell through galleries, exhibitions and commissions. When I started to have some of my pieces cast in bronze it brought a new dimension to my work.

I have exhibited and sold my work at several galleries and exhibitions in England and Wales, including the Society of Wildlife Artists Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries, London, the Royal West of England Academy Autumn Exhibition, the ‘Nature in Art’ Gallery at Wallsworth Hall, and the St David’s Hall Gallery in Cardiff.