A few words to describe this background: his father was a Ukranian refugee who fled to England at the end of the Second World War, and his mother was an Italian who, like many others, went to find work in the north of England. Andrew was born in 1963 and his early years, until 1987, were spent in Yorkshire and Newport, South Wales, where he studied art obtaining a first degree. On the death of his father he moved to Latina, Italy where he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. There, in 1992, he obtained a further degree, with honours.