Learning about drawing and painting all the time, I continually experiment with different materials and techniques. My oil paintings, for example, are built upon layers of underpainting and glazing and use different types of support. A favourite tool is an electric hand-sander!

Absorbing subjects from all angles – observing, sketching, photographing and reading – informs and influences my paintings and prints. I am not moved by either photorealism or pure abstraction, but I try to find a way between the two. The tension between them is like the tension between the solid physicality and apparent permanence of natural and human life and its transient, constantly changing nature. Current problems of climate change and global pandemics mean that many aspects of life which hitherto seemed steady and reliable (at least in richer parts of the world) are increasingly recognised as mutable and fragile.