As my ‘gadgie’ paintings became more and more popular, collectors would often ask “Where is he going?”, “What shapes their lives?”.

While the whole history of my ‘gadgies’ was very much alive in my mind, I realised that everyone had their own interpretation of these working folk in their old baggy jackets, flat caps or headscarves.

I think that’s a large part of the attraction of my ‘gadgies’ - anyone can place their own family stories into these artworks.

So I wanted to recreate the ‘gadgie’ world that surrounded these men, women and children (like me). 

It was world that was disappearing so quickly before our eyes - as old steelworks became retail parks, docklands became riverside apartments and coal mines became heritage museums.

My ‘Gadgies’ became smaller in the paintings and the living and working environment around them grew in scale.

J.M.W. Turner saw beauty in the London skyline at the dawn of the industrial era, giving the early Victorian city a surreal beauty in the sunsets and sunrises that he perceived through the smoke, smog and clouds on the Thames.

Monet did the same in the Edwardian era, and Lowry had his unique take on the mill towns of Northern England.

Artists (like most folk) appreciate the loveliness of natural landscapes, but it takes a specially creative mind to see  beauty in towns and cities filled with steam and smoke, so maybe I'm standing on the shoulders of giants when I try to paint those other-worldly scenes of our past industrial heritage.

I wanted to recreate an impressionistic feel of those foggy, winter days that were so prevalent in our industrial cities, and placed my ‘gadgie’ in the heart of them - heading to, or from, a hard day's work.

I named this collection of paintings “The Working Man” and exhibited them across the UK in many cities that had gone through that post-industrial trauma.

The ‘Working Man’ collection was exhibited in the Great North Museum: Hancock in Newcastle, in Glasgow’s Scotland Street Museum of Education and at Magna in Sheffield.

I still regularly return to this theme of placing my ‘gadgies’ in sweeping cityscapes of a bygone era. I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I do painting them.