After working at a solicitor's office and as an apprentice lithographer, he became a full-time artist in 1949. He sold his first cartoon to Punch at eighteen, and became a regular contributor. As a painter, he had his first one-man exhibition in 1955. He exhibited in Belfast, London and Dublin and won a CEMA scholarship to study art in Paris. Since the late 1980s he has concentrated on collage works, which have been exhibited in New York and London.