I love music. I have loved it since I was a small child & my father played me things such as The Carnival of The Animals and the Hebrides Overture on his Leek hi-fi. Since then, I have been fortunate in visiting the island of Staffa, the Shetland Islands and many other wonderful places in the British Isles & Europe.

I also aspire to music-making, and have played the violin since age 13. It's harder for me than painting, although I don't do to badly at playing jigs & reels & some of the more playable bits of the classical repertoire. At present I’m reading the wonderful Patrick O’Brien Aubrey/ Maturin series of novels. I like to think I share just one thing in common with Captain Jack Aubrey RN. A keen amateur player, the author tells us that Aubrey possessed a good fiddle,(an Amati, I think) and a “sea-going” fiddle, one that could accompany him on long voyages aboard a man ‘o’ war. I too have a little old German-made fiddle which has travelled with me since I was a boy – the “sea-going” fiddle – whilst my good one is a Ewan Thomson! I commissioned an instrument from Shetland violin-maker Ewen in 2010. I’ve found that a really good, well set-up instrument really helps the playing!

I was first given a go with oil paints at about the age of 7 and have used them ever since. Here on  http://www.backfrombeyond.org I would like to share images of the plein-air paintings made on 3 trips to Shetland, Shetland –inspired paintings made at home, and some of the photos taken whilst there.