About

​I see my job as pulling down images from the sky and trying to make them more solid. I started painting 16 years ago and have had to undergo an apprenticeship in the difficult science of actually straining an image through some paint and persuading it to lie down on a wood panel or canvas in a reasonably convincing way without looking like the work of someone else.

It is a constant wrestling match to give the pictures my own stamp so that they are patently mine. It gives me the horrors whenever someone says “You should see so and so’s work it’s just like yours”. Thank God it is usually nothing like mine and I am able to breathe again.

There is far too much reality in the world as it is and there are thousands of artists out there who can paint sheep whose eyes follow you round the room, landscapes that you can walk into and portraits in which you can see every pore and nasal hair. This is image making of a high order, but I’d rather do battle with perspective, light, proportions and making people bendy enough to make the images that I want to bring forth. After all all why should my world look like the rest of the universe?

Ideas are the most precious assets and I try and sketch them onto paper as quickly as possible so they don’t evaporate, then they remain in a fairly liquid state until they can be solidified in paint, always there is always a chance that the idea will develop beyond the original muse and become something quite else.

 

It would be easier, almost, to describe what my work isn’t. It’s not really surreal, it’s not quirky, it doesn’t want to be just funny, It’s definitely NOT cartoon, it certainly not freaky and it’s completely, absolutely, totally not whimsical - I cordially hate the “W” word. I think the word I am looking for is the lovely French word "Irréal", this would make me an "Irréaliste" and I'd be happy with that description.”
“I create images about the intangible made real in an absurd world, whether it be dancing with angels, charming mermaids, going on a sea voyage in a water butt or judging the quality of clouds