Land/waterscapes and interiors are subjects of just some of the series I paint to contain my visual explorations.

Like many painters I used to work in the landscape itself, searching for some significant view that would act somehow as a visual inspiration. However my efforts could never match Nature which proved to be too powerful and overwhelming, leaving me unconvinced of my approach and unable to create any thing of interest
It was not until ideas that were evolving in other series seemed equally applicable to thinking and feeling about landscape, albeit from a different angle. I became increasingly intrigued by paradox- visual irony- the combination of opposites ie; reality / illusion /allusion , abstraction /figuration , past / present , surface / depth , all of which are like sub-plots , as it were, to the main feeling and overall idea I wanted to produce,- an image in the process of making itself visible on the very edge of perception , an unique autonomous entity although related to or part of a series.

As I want to discover rather than copy or illustrate , the painting dictates it's own future ,in the sense that I cannot work on it unless it suggests the next step. Often there are mental or emotional blocks and the work will remain dormant sometimes for weeks,months or even years. As a result I work on many images at varying stages of resolution - hence the numerous series. one strategy to overcome this is to shuffle the works around each other or take easily transportable ones to visit my other studio and meet up with other works . Often there is some cross fertilisation of ideas and hybrids can form.

Within the various series one of my interests is the depiction of different kinds of space. Deep space; sky,receeding perspectives - shallower space ; forests , spinneys -shallower still ; urban interiors, still lives and finally micro space with little sense of scale, no top , bottom,or side , analogous to looking straight down at the soil or through a microscope. Other topics include movement of natural forces : river / sea meeting rock, wood , urban structures, tidal surges . The wind blowing : water surfaces, wheat fields, sand dunes, trees. Electro-chemical activity ,fire, the eye tracking pin prick illusions of light over the surface of the canvas.

Influences I acknowledge; Cubism,Abstract expressionism ,Spanish painters, especially Goya for the horizontal format of his Black paintings and the intense structures in his paintings and etchings, Velazquez and Picasso for the orgy of possibilities that have grown out of Las Meninas. Since the mid 1980s I have continued to be fascinated by doorways mirrors and windows, with or without grills.

Lastly, my 'Maverick' works contain mini series from about 1-4 works each , often seriously playful and intentionly deceptive . Materials, acrylic co polymer, a medium that binds pigment, soil, sand,collage to canvas, paper, plywood or board. The works can be in the form of a diptych, triptych, rectangular or shaped.