How long have you been creating?

Nearly seven months, since 7th August 2005. The harvest in Wexford was so stunning last Autumn hat I decided to paint it there and then.

What is your media of choice?

Acrylics. It's probably because I had them as a present from my Mum before I started painting, and I'm too lazy to try anything new.

What are you motivations for creating?

To share what I see. We all do that when we see something wonderful and blurt out "Look at that - isn't it lovely !". With painting, you can capture that moment and share it.

What other artists or movements inform your work?

A print of a watercolour of Oast Houses called "Spring", by Rowland Hilder. My parents got it for a wedding present and I think they must have hung it over my cradle or something.

Van Gogh, the same as most of us.

What do you find visually stimulating right now?

Clouds. Winter clouds used to look plain gray to me. Since I started painting, I can see that they are richly coloured.

I also want to reveal the shapes that you sometimes imagine in clouds, in a painting. Things like a rhinoceros or a car.

What's the last book you read?

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. No need to tell you who it's by. Thank goodness you didn't ask as couple of weeks ago. We took some Mills and Boon "Bodice Rippers" to a car boot sale and I read one of them while I manned the stall. It wasn't badly written, either...

Tell us about some of your artistic goals for 2006.

To bring my finished work closer to the vision in my minds eye: I will probably repaint some of the earlier ones, to show you the idea better. I have already repainted one, the cloud one.

To paint some of the wonderful "Auld Fellas" (old men) that are a vanishing Irish institution, and capture some of their sparkle. They always wear a cap, their faces are brown as leather, crinkled with laughter lines and they tell endless tall stories with a sparkle in their eyes. And that's before they've touched a Guinness !

What would you like your fellow EBSQ artists and our collectors to know about you and/or your work?

Well, I would like my work to appeal to "the man on the street" and to be simple enough to be understood without explanation. That's why I often use everyday subject matter. I want it to be the sort of thing that you would be happy to hang on your wall at home. I'm even quite fussy about the frames because of that.

No matter how much I improve, I can't imagine much of my work in an art gallery, with people studying it for deep meaning. They will not be that sort of painting. My ideal success would be if a big supermarket mass produced prints of my work.

My wife, Ann, and I live in a small cottage in a scattered rural community. I am well known locally for hang-gliding, motorbikes and windsurfing. Everyone was surprised when I started painting, but now the greeting down the pub has changed from "Have you jumped of any mountains since ?" to "Have you sold any more paintings ?".