Don lives in Christchurch. He was born in Wellington in 1937. His father, a commercial artist, was killed in Crete, May 1941. His mother was a broadcaster...

Don lives in Christchurch. He was born in Wellington in 1937. His father, a commercial artist, was killed in Crete, May 1941. His mother was a broadcaster and potter. He was educated at the University of Otago and completed his MA at the University of Canterbury, followed by a Diploma of Drama in Education at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. His early art studies were at the School of Art Dunedin, and he studied water colour with H.V. Miller (Dunedin) and Life Painting with Doris Lusk (Christchurch.) "For the first part of my working life I taught Secondary School subjects (at Linwood High School, Christchurch, 1962-67) including Drama and Art, and was for 19 years Senior Lecturer in Drama in Education training teachers, at Christchurch College of Education. I resigned at the end of 1987, in order to paint full time. I am married to Jill, and we have five adult children and six grandchildren. In making my artwork I enjoy the co-ordination of hand, eye, and perception that make up good drawing and composition. I enjoy applying paint not so much as a subject matter in its own right, as a medium for communicating quite simply and directly what is before me, or what is in my imagination. I enjoy the step by step realisation of images which never turn out quite the way I had envisaged them, and the moods and feelings evoked as I work."