I was born in the early hours of Friday 13th December 1974 in London, England. With four Polish grandparents my surname translates from the Latin for the species Crex Crex: (Land-rail or Corn Crake). From the age of four I attended Loyola Preparatory School in Buckhurst Hill, Essex. Represented the school at football and athletics, repeatedly winning sprint, relay and field events. In a national sports competition I came second in the long jump at age nine. Member of the orchestra and choir and awarded monitor status in my final year.

In 1986 I was awarded a full academic scholarship to study at Forest School, nr. Snaresbrook, London. In the first two years I won maths and computer science prizes for my BBC Comal programming skills. Awarded a City & Guilds in games programming at age thirteen (1988) for my windows-esque 'Mastermind'. Continued sporting and musical activities with various accolades. Sat GCSE and Advanced Level maths in the fourth year, attaining grades A and Merit respectively. Sat nine more GCSEs (grades AAABBBBCC) and one AO Level (grade C) at age sixteen.

Achieved a passing grade in Music Theory grade six in the 6th form. A Levels in Art & Design, Geography, Physics and General Studies in 1993 earned grades B,C,D and B. Under monitor in final year and captains of house teams for: music; football; basketball; and athletics. Immediately after finishing my exams I spent two and a half months travelling North America with a friends' family. Starting in New York, flying to Florida and then onto the west coast I took in seven states in all and preferred Las Vegas and the deserts!

I then took a Foundation Course in Art & Design (one year) at the Cat Hill campus of Middlesex University. After being introduced to all disciplines and practice areas in the first term, I straddled the Fine Art and Graphic Design areas for my 'illustrative' specialism. For further details, click on the 'Art' button. Looking for a place on an illustrative degree I couldn't find a suitable BA programme and decided to search for a more theoretical rather than practical course via the UCAS clearing process.

Goldsmiths College seemed an ideal place to learn more about visual culture. A three year joint honours BA degree in Media & Communication Studies and Sociology offered about a 70:30 mix of theory and practice. Moving to south London proved to be rather expensive and I was forced to take temp jobs to pay for living/studying expenses. This afforded me PC and Mac exposure as well as real world experience of Microsoft Office applications which has always been useful. However, the time and money burden left me with an unimpressive 2:2 and quelled my desire to go on to study for a MA.

Freelance work in small agency/consultancy environment followed, involving both strategic and creative project work as well as plenty of senior-level working experience. The areas I worked in concentrated around the communications industries (marketing, advertising and design). Music production and image creation have ever since been my principal past-time(s). Tiring of the uncertain hours and occasionally very long weeks of freelancing, contract work followed since early 2000, exposing me to several large corporates, in the areas of marketing, IT consultancy and web development. This takes me up to today and my current jobhunt.