My life really started at 25, with my first mission to Afghanistan. The Twin Towers had fallen and there was work to do in the refugee camps on the Pakistan border. I was a logistician (what the doctors and nurses didn't do...) with a medical disaster relief organisation, Medecins Sans Frontiers. MSF - was the best. I discovered that I had much to learn, but I found that I could be both useful and have an adventure in places you couldn't go on holiday (Sierra Leone, Congo-Brazzaville, South Sudan) was both thrilling and rewarding.

After five years of mostly living in mud huts in the middle of the bush, I returned, with my now wife, to work for the NHS in Salford. After a number of years in the health sector, I returned to the humanitarian world, helping to co-ordinate response scale up to crises around the world. 

Since returning from my time as a disaster relief worker in war-torn countries, I have found it hard to process what stood for ‘normal life’. Without a threat to your existence, normal life is an existential threat. I found something real in creating furniture, and later - naked filament bulb lighting - upcycled from our industrial and cultural heritage. I love to explore how objects that had outlived their usefulness can fit together and take on a 'second life': lighting our homes. Something that is practical, but also beautiful - and I discovered - happily bang on trend!

In 2016, when the world was going to shit again, I began to create and sell satirical art. The following year, I was asked at a comedy gig, "…and what do you do Ben?" I answered, "I used to be a humanitarian worker, but I now identify as an artist." The comedian could only reply, "Wow! There's a lot in that statement mate!"

Since identifying as an artist, I have appeared regularly at art fairs, exhibitions and selling online. However when, during the pandemic, my dad died of cancer, I contracted cancer, and then my art-selling website was 'accidentally deleted' by the Silicon Valley geniuses and their algorithms. I thought for a moment I might jack in the art thing, return to the world of 'work'. It turns out, the world of cubical monkeys, commuting and water cooler conversations had suffered too. 

My reconciliation is to identify as an artist, and my response is to create digital art for a digital
future. My art starts with an idea. I try to translate the horrors that I witness in the third modernity into art that makes you think, but also laugh.

I hope that you like what I've done with the place... Have a look around, subscribe to my blog, get in touch on the socials. Thanks for stopping by to buy...