'I thought this is a battle I can't win - things had to change'

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I loved art, and I went there when I was thrown out of other lessons. I worked down a tin mine, I worked on a mackerel fishing boat, I worked in a slaughterhouse, I did all sorts of rubbish jobs."Amid his time moving in-between jobs, he fell into a life of committing petty crimes.

He said: "I had no income unless I worked, which I wasn't particularly inclined to do. I thought 'I don't want to be this side of things.' I'm not a quitter, but I thought this is a battle I can't win, so they put me in a locked guard's van on a train to London to get out of Devon and Cornwall, and I luckily pulled myself together, did some work, got a place at art college."After getting himself on the wrong side of the law for the last two years, he now had a place at art college in London and thought "why haven't I done this for a long time?"While he had rekindled his love of art during his time at college, it wasn't until he met his ex-wife, who had been a teacher, that she convinced him that he should do the same.

I'd seen Liverpool had won the league before at Anfield, and I'd been to lots of great games."While he said that he mainly paints for his own satisfaction, after he shared some of his work with the Liverpool Supporters' Club, he couldn't help but get a buzz from their reaction. He said: "It's great when people say "Yeah, I was there [at that game in the painting] or 'I remember I stood here or that's me outside the ground'.