Introduction

Before I was fourteen I had four legal fathers. My teenage years were spent living in seven different houses and attending seven different schools. I even survived living in the Wild West of West Yorkshire – 1960’s Kippax where I lived in a semi derelict slum. I could crawl to the derelict house next door through a hole in my bedroom wall. Life there revolved around sex, violence and pints and pints of beer. My then stepfather was a creepy medical room attendant who worked at a nearby coal mine. He was addicted to black magic and seances. His teenage son was a known sex pest. To earn extra money before Christmas the youth would slaughter hundreds of turkeys with an iron bar. The late 1960’s saw me fatherless with a suicidal Mother who was in and out of mental institutions – she later died in a fire. During my ‘A’ level studies I had to survive totally alone and fend for myself.

Despite all this disruption I managed to attend university and qualify as an art teacher in 1973.

I made my first international foray into the Arts early in 1976 with, some said at the time, an outrageous public display. When aged only twenty five my entire exhibition The Complete Paintings of Vermeer of Delft repainted by Barrington Bramley was purchased by the Dutch. The thirty five pictures were placed on permanent exhibition in Delft. The new Vermeer Museum was opened by the British Ambassador to the Netherlands whilst the European Press looked on with pens poised. I bought my first home outright from the proceeds and the BBC even made a film about it all.

A far bigger breakthrough happened a few years later. Auctioneers Christie’s had just sold their star lot Mr & Mrs Coltman by Wright of Derby to the National Gallery, London. When the Gallery came to collect their new aquisition from the Auction House, amidst much excitement, they took my copy by mistake! News of this flashed around the London Art World. Over the next thirty odd years I received literally thousands of requests for my copies. Hundreds of original paintings came to my Studio from all over the World – masterpieces by Breughel, Canaletto, Gauguin, Modigliani Monet, Manet, Stubbs, Titian, Turner, van Gogh, van Dyck, etc., etc.. I would remove the pictures from their frames with glee and my copy would share the same easel. I was paid millions of pounds and became the Art World’s best kept secret – years before Banksy arrived.

I had to be discreet as my Studio would have become a prime target for thieves- they must have been more than a little miffed when they stole a Bramley from a Stately Home worth thousand rather than a genuine Old Master worth millions. One National Museum spent a seven figure sum to purchase an important British Painting. The Institution was sent my copy in error and it took three weeks before Gallery Staff realised it was painted by myself. Auction House Chairman and Directors of Art Dealerships very quickly worked out my services provided a unique lever in persuading their Clients to sell their pictures. Consequently I won them lots of business for nearly forty years and they used me exclusively. I became known as The Golden Boy of the Salerooms and have had Clients from all over the World: The Royal Family, foreign Royals, the Indian Raj, Middle Eastern potentates, Russian and Chinese oligarchs and the rich and famous. In every case my works very convincingly masquerade as the originals and fool everyone.

Thousands of people claim to copy paintings – when they never do – they make copies of printed reproductions and photographs. The resulting loss of quality is inevitably enormous. My decades spent of uninterrupted loaning of hundreds of valuable original paintings in order to make copies is totally without precedence in the entire History of Art. It is what sets me apart from everyone else and defines who I am.