About Me
I have been involved in the arts in some shape or form since I was a teenager. I was born in Aberdeen, Scotland but spent most of my childhood and all my teenage years in Kent and Surrey, England. At 19 I moved to London to study at university and this was the beginning of my development into a semi-professional or professional artist, designer, musician, photographer and writer.
In 1990, at university, I discovered the Apple MacIntosh computer which I immediately fell in love with, leading to my interest in digital art and Graphic Design (which became my career), following a stint in Mitre House Publishing for my degree industrial placement and writing for the university magazine Cityscape.
I also began writing music, having been playing instruments since the age of 7, by the 90s I had played recorder, clarinet, cello, guitar, bass guitar, double bass, piano, sythesizer and drums/percussion with varying levels of success. I love all kinds of music from Mahler to Drum n' Bass, but became fascinated with house music in the late 80s and I was determined to learn how to make it. By 1993 I had become fairly competent at creating electronic music and married this with more traditional instrumentation in my band Children of Dub. I continued to make music under this name until 2001 and after a break of several years returned to song writing and music production with the final album from Children Of Dub, featuring several guest artists inciuding singer Emma Stack.
Meanwhile during most of the 90s and the first half of the 00s I worked as a Graphic Designer in London, Dublin (from 1999 onwards) and finally for myself in Co. Wexford (Ireland). I worked extensively in magazine/book design and sub-editing over almost a twenty year period, also writing and illustrating for some of them. During this period I also produced work as a digital artist and photographer, exhibiting from time to time in small galleries and selling limited edition prints. My artistic work has also been used as book covers and CD covers. In 2006 I began retraining as a horticulturalist, which is now my main profession.
I began writing poetry at the age of 15, pretty badly I might add. Over time I developed my own style of both poetry and prose. My first article was published in 1991 but a year after leaving university I left journalism aside for other activities (mainly music) until the early 2000s when I began to write more frequently. For most of the 1990s I concentrated on my band Children Of Dub and released several albums and singles during that time. A multitude of my articles in magazines and websites have been appearing in recent years, which you can find on my articles page. In 2005 my first book, on spiritual wisdom, "The Journey" was published under the pseudonym Joseph Dawton. In 2006 I was editor of a collection of poetry entitled "Where The Hazel Falls", featuring some of my poems, as well as eight other authors in Ireland.
My first book to be published without the use of a pseudonym was "The Druid's Primer" in 2012, which is a non-fiction book on Druidry. A revised and expanded edition of "The Journey", was published in UK and USA by Moon Books, in late 2012. My first solo collection of poetry "Through The Cracks In The Concrete The Wilderness Grows" was published in 2016 through Killkenny Druidry College Press and "Kerry Folk Tales" (with Gary Branigan) was published in summer 2019 through The History Press. "How To Save The Planet" was published by Electric Publications in November 2019. "5th Element" by Children Of Dub was released on CD in March 2020, followed by a 2xCD best-of compilation "Evolution 1993-2020".
In April 2021 "The Druid Garden" was published by Moon Books, swiftly followed by "Samhain: The Roots of Halloween" from The History Press in September 2021. In April 2022 "Dingle Folk Tales" was pubished through Electric Publications, featuring stories entirely from the Dingle Peninsula, on the west coast of Ireland. I am currently working on several more books for 2023/24 and beyond and have returned to occasional photographic work after a long break from it.
"Moral coercion is happening all over the world, but it is commonly known as Political Correctness. When this happened in Fascist & Communist countries it was deplored but now it is an acceptable new weapon in the arsenal of government and corporate controllers. Given that laws exist to protect people from acts of discrimination or exploitation, why is it also necessary to deprive people of unpopular or unfair opinions and beliefs? Thinking is not a crime, no matter how offensive, we should never deny people the right to speak their minds - to do otherwise is the beginning of totalitarianism."
