Profile

I was bought a set of acrylic paints for my 15th birthday                        and immediately began to teach myself to make the most of this highly flexible medium.

It has become my life’s work.

Following A-levels, I hugely enjoyed my year-long Foundation Course at  Manchester Polytechnic; throwing myself, for the very first time, into 3D work and purely abstract painting.

Yet, at the weekend, I would paint (and sell!) small studies of garden birds, having already developed a keen interest in birdwatching.

I eventually turned professional on my 25th birthday and, 3 years later, received the first of my RSPB commissions for Christmas cards. It was the seal-of-approval   I had been looking for.

Over the next 20 years I designed hundreds of cards for charities and publishers such as Royles, Medici and Webb Ivory. My highly detailed illustrative, style continued to prove popular as I designed Wildlife plates for Spode, Robin plates for Danbury Mint and illustrated 3 children’s books.

However, in the last 10 years I have developed a particular style; expressing myself more freely on canvas and canvasboard, painting and (technical term alert!) splattering the work using brushes and palette knives.                                    Uniquely, I also apply this technique to handmade paper textured with plantlife, fixed onto canvasboard: my PaperBax.

I live in Alsager, south Cheshire, with my partner Janet. We regularly take part in top-quality fairs organised by Craft in Focus at Royal Horticultural Society venues all over the country, and every August you will find us in Rutland, as part of the BirdFair. Check out my current (and future) itinerary at Facebook and Instagram where you can also find my very latest  works as they are completed.

I take my inspiration from the countryside around me and hope my appreciation of it shows through in my work. I am still finding stimulating subjects, fresh ideas and new ways to express myself in acrylic paints.

David A Finney .