Introduction

If I turn my mind to it very quickly I can come up with several ideas for works …paintings, drawings, or sculptures. Sometimes ideas come to me when I least expect it, or when my mind is on other things. Ideas can be related to my current experiences, or to my feelings about things that are happening to me in my life at that particular time. Alternatively they can be related to a current interest, or something that occupies my attention at that moment.   

        A lot of my work is autobiographical…either directly or indirectly, consciously or subconsciously. It is frequently very personal, and expresses events or circumstances or experiences in my life.

        I work in Acrylic on Canvas, and Watercolour, Crayon, Pastel, sometimes with Gouache highlights, on card or paper, I also Draw in Pencil,  Ink, or both. I also make Sculpture…in unglazed Ceramic, and more recently, in Stone.    

        In all my works of art, however, or from whatever, they are made, what they crucially entail, to me, are craftsmanship and beauty, and above all: content and meaning. When I have an idea I execute it, and when I begin to execute it, at least after the initial layout phase, the creation process becomes to some extent automatic, the more so the further into the work I get. After a while I don't give a great deal of thought to what I am doing, but probably pay more attention to the music I'm listening to than to the creative process, very frequently I will work on a picture upside down in its later stages. 

        This may explain in part why I frequently do not understand how certain things have appeared in my works. As a result of this it often happens that when I look at a work again that I’ve made, maybe after several years, that I will be surprised at how it has worked out, at why I did certain things, and especially what the work is ‘about’…i.e.; it’s underlying meaning.   

        Often I see the meaning of a work more clearly after coming back to it after many years.