My work is inspired by landscapes I’ve lived in and know well – Yorkshire, the Lake District and coastal New Zealand. They are my response to the experience of these places and emerge from an intuitive process of ‘call and response’ between visual memory and the play of materials.
When out walking I am thinking about painting, but when I start to paint I leave analysis aside, working in a rapid, instinctive way. If some intriguing sense of space is recognised, I pause and proceed in a more considered way. Often I only realise why something works when I see it later in the landscape. I like to allow the media, the uncontrived movement of paint to lead me, responding to the unpredictable marks and interactions which occur along the way. This can be exiting or disorienting and ‘getting lost’ is always a risk. If, after returning to the work with a fresh eye, there is no ‘alchemy’, no poetry, I return to a freer approach allowing the paint to suggest a new way forward. Thiskeeps me searching until, eventually, I arrive somewhere familiar, but new. Hopefully somewhere the viewer would like to dwell a while.