I find it really difficult to write about what I paint, which is why I’m a painter not a writer. However…

I paint on surfaces I construct using materials that I salvage from skips, building sites and parts of old furniture from second hand shops.

Painting on perfectly white, characterless surfaces does not interest me. So I use raw materials primed only with thin washes of watered-down emulsion.

On every surface, I try to allow subtle, pleasing amounts of marks and blemishes to show through, enough to embellish and individualise the painted image without overriding it or making it appear chaotic.

The effects of painting onto such surfaces I find are often unpredictable, which I like. Stains or patches of sanded varnish under a wash of pale blue-grey might permeate clearly as the paint dries, becoming clouds; a hardened splash of domestic gloss paint that I could disguise behind a dark area of trees might eventually become an inexplicable, obtrusive object amid a field of grass. I can never fully preconceive what a finished painting will look like…
more >>