I am a Jamaican/German born in Georgetown, Guyana in 1954 (then the British colony British Guiana). My Jamaican family descends directly from enslaved people brought to the Caribbean from West Africa. Many members of my German family perished during the Shoah. My Mother escaped to the United Kingdom with the Kindertransport. My family moved to Kingston, Jamaica in 1957 (also a British Colony at that time) where I grew up. In 1972 my father was posted to Geneva, Switzerland where from 1973-1977 I attended the Geneva School of Fine Arts graduating with a diploma in painting and sculpture. After a brief stay in Dijon, France where I went to the School of Fine Arts I moved to Cologne, Germany in 1978. I lived in there from 1978 to 1993 when I returned to Jamaica. During the years in Cologne I exhibited in several solo and group exhibitions in Cologne, Bonn, Koblenz, Muenster, London, San Francisco and Geneva. In 1985 I joined the artists’ collective Galerie am Buttermarkt in Cologne and was an active member until leaving Germany in 1993. As a collective we organised exhibitions, many with political and social themes, of our own work as well as the works of many up and coming artists. I returned to Jamaica in 1993 to found the eco-boutique hotel Mockingbird Hill where my work was on permanent display in all areas of the hotel. In 1996 I opened the Gallery Carriacou at the hotel organizing exhibitions for local artists as well as showing my own work. 

I returned to Germany in 2018 where I live in Berlin with my wife and muse Shireen with whom I have been together for almost 50 yearsand who has been very supportive, and travelled with me on my artistic journey. After the long break in Jamaica I am once again able to concentrate on my art which has been central in my life since I was a child. In much of my work I look into the traumatic experiences of by both my Jamaican and my German ancestors. I see the parallels of the two tragedies, Slavery and the Shoah, and I consider what it means to be a descendant of both along with exploring the complexities that come with my duality. Having grown up in Jamaica, a former colony and operating a business there, I am keenly aware of the effects of colonialism and of the colonial structures that, despite independence, exist to this day, cementing the mental slavery that plagues the nation. For so long we lived in denial of the colonial past that shaped us, but now the call for reparatory justice in the Caribbean is, today, loud and very clear. Mine is one of the many Jamaican voices that are a part of that call.