You will be aware of my lifelong interest in everything to do with the sea and maritime history. It has always featured in my art, and at various times in my life my creativity has been expressed in the creation of 3D models, starting with Airfix kits as a boy. In the mid 1980’s I visited the National Model Engineering Exhibition held at The Wembley Conference Centre in London. The scratch built marine models on display there fired my imagination. This was a period in my life when I was not painting and heavily involved in my management role in the world of advertising. Over 6 years, I built from scratch, 4 models of World War 2 US warships to a scale of 1/192. They were all exhibited at the Model Engineering Exhibition over this six year period. These models were built from raw materials such as wood, brass, plastic card etc and using accurate plans, sourced in my case from the USA. Each individual element was hand crafted in minute detail. Special working methods were devised in many instances. It was some challenge. The first model was of the USS San Francisco, a US cruiser, the second was the USS Oakland, an anti aircraft cruiser, the third was USS Emmons, a Benson class destroyer and the fourth model was of the famous USS Indianapolis. They all won medals in their classes - 2 silver and 2 bronze in all. The USS Oakland was also exhibited in The NAVIGA international exhibition for which it won a bronze medal. Building these models took from 300 to 450 hours each. It was very exacting and demanding, but proved to be a great relaxation at a very busy time in my life. After this brief excursion into 3D, I soon returned to, in many ways the less demanding 2 dimensional art I have continued to do till this day.