After graduating in Painting, Drawing and Printmaking from Harris College, Preston, Nev gained a teaching qualification from Manchester University. In 1968 he moved to London and taught Art in state secondary schools until 1989, when he moved to Cornwall. As a committed artist and educator, he deemed it of paramount importance to maintain his own practice, in order to better inform his teaching. He taught until 1997, when he left and started painting full time.

He first exhibited in Plymouth in 1999, and has since shown work regularly in Cornwall, notably in the Camelford gallery, the Willoughby gallery, Bude, and the Rock Institute; in Devon, at The Wharf and the Guildhall, Tavistock, and at the Bond Pearce gallery, Plymouth; in London, at the Mall Galleries.

His work varies in subject matter: the celebration of the relationship between natural process and the manufactured world; a passion for music and its exponents, particularly modern jazz and reggae; and a love of people.

“I paint: The peeling surfaces that reveal layered histories. A flower, as beautiful in senescence as in bud and bloom. A handle polished by use and rusted by nature. Musicians, and the colours, rhythms and textures of their music. Portraits and other commissioned work.”