Crossing Mediums and Worlds

I have lived long enough with image and story to know that mediums don’t just stack; they cross‑pollinate. After more than 35 years moving between graphic design, advertising and fine arts, I learned to weave filmic atmospheres into paintings and to smuggle painterly textures back into motion graphics. I am a multi‑disciplinary creative focusing on design in film, music and television and specialising in digital marketing, consumer behaviour and information exchange. Collaborations with global studios such as Universal Pictures, Paramount and 20th Century Fox taught me how commercial aesthetics can harbour personal mythology, and my current role as an Associate Professor of Design Thinking and Innovation at the University of Bristol reminds me daily that theory and practice are lovers, not rivals. Each project is a new map drawn between physical and digital space, between brush and algorithm, where a single gesture might echo across games, films, music and printed objects.

My fascination lies in the edges of authorship, fragments, samples, bootlegs, pseudonyms and geolocated story‑worlds. I use them the way DJs use records: to cut, loop and splice histories into new narratives. These elements are not raw materials so much as invitations to play; they ask how a piece of work can be both mine and not mine, local and everywhere at once. Working with generative systems and AI extends this inquiry, not as a novelty but as a continuation of collage: codes become collaborators, guiding my hand as often as I instruct them. Authorship, for me, resides not in the fragment or the tool, but in the assertion that binds them, the act of choosing, transforming and releasing a work back into circulation.

Teaching, Thinking and Innovation

At Bristol, I teach design thinking as a practice of attention. My students and I explore the transformative power of design and art, examining how a colour palette, a typeface or a camera movement can reshape perspectives and drive meaningful change. My academic research invests in systems thinking and in practice‑as‑research; we are constantly building bridges between academia and the creative industries. Mentorship and collaboration are central to my pedagogy: I guide emerging artists and designers to navigate the complexities of contemporary design practices while also learning from their explorations. Teaching is thus another form of storytelling, another site where fragments become wholes.

Tools and Processes

I keep my studio porous. On one table you might find pens, paint, photographs, and sketchbooks; on another, the glow of Photoshop layers, After Effects timelines and generative scripts. An analogue camera sits beside a microphone; a pot of ink shares space with a tablet stylus. AI joins this continuum not as a replacement but as another instrument – a way of extending the vocabulary of mark‑making and narrative. The following list illustrates how varied these tools and interests are:

Analogue instruments
Pens, brushes, ink, paint, collage and photography.

Digital tools
Photoshop, After Effects, vector design, editing software and generative code.

Generative practices
AI‑assisted image generation, sampling, remixing and algorithmic systems that produce variations and mutations.

Experimental interests
Bootlegs, pseudonymous releases, geolocated story‑worlds and the archaeology of fragments.

Across these practices, I remain committed to creating immersive narratives that invite viewers to become explorers. Rooted in a fascination with complex storytelling, my work forms interactive spaces that engage audiences in both physical and digital realms. Whether through mixed‑media paintings, prints, games, films or installations, each piece is a portal into a layered world. Ultimately, my work asks what it means to assert an age of endless reproduction and how, through that assertion, we might still experience mystery, identity and transformation.