Skippings Fine Arts is the continuation of over 25 years of work in the arts, spanning collecting, research, and dealing in international painting and sculpture.

The name “Skippings” originates from my first brick-and-mortar venue, established in a Grade II listed Georgian house in Great Yarmouth, which provided a distinctive and atmospheric setting for exhibitions. “Skippings Gallery” later became Skippings Fine Arts, to reflect its broader focus.

Today, Skippings focuses on art and collecting online rather than within a fixed physical gallery space, continuing a long-standing relationship with artworks that emphasise presence, history and “soul” of objects.

My work as a dealer, art historian and custodian has centred for many years on international art, including French painting, tribal and ethnographic works, Caribbean art, Russian painting, and artists who moved between cultures and traditions. My key interest is in how works carry memory, atmosphere, and human presence across time and geography.

I studied History of Art at Cambridge University, where art initially remained largely abstract to me—understood through books, images, and theory rather than direct experience.

That changed when I moved to Paris in the late 1990s. There, for the first time, I encountered art as something physical and lived: objects that could be experienced directly, handled, and understood “hands on”. I started as a collector, purchasing my first works of art to make my newly rented Paris apartment more beautiful—and quickly discovered that they made my life better in ways I hadn’t expected.

I worked with galleries in Paris, gaining experience in the sourcing, buying, and placement of works, and later worked as an expert for a Paris auction house. I then returned to the UK and established Skippings.

Over the years, I have found that certain works simply call out to me: they carry a sense of presence, of having been lived with, handled, or shaped by time. With paintings and works on paper, I am drawn to pieces that capture a moment—works into which the artist has put something of themselves, creating a quiet but lasting connection between maker and viewer. These are the works I am drawn to, and the ones I continue to seek out.

There is no fixed method behind this—only experience, instinct, and a close, hands-on relationship with objects. My aim is to recognise these qualities, to bring such works into view, and, where possible, to place them with people who will respond to them in the same way.

.Artist’s studio interior — a working space shaped by objects, memory, and activity.