ABOUT

This compilation of drawings and paintings is a snapshot of picture-making over many years. Rather than documenting the breadth of my output, it tries to give a sense of my interests and the results from 2000. I have tried to gather the work into sections, but the ideas leap about and often defy placement into specific periods of work. So it’s common to see motifs and symbols reoccur again and again as I rediscover them or see their importance more clearly.​

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There is a child-like quality to the work that delights in absurd conjunctions and playful scenarios. Many of the pictures seem to be theatrical, almost depicting imaginary events on stage. Setting the pain of life beside inventive fun helps me find my place in the world, which in turn anchors the imagery that wells up from my unconscious.

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​To me the pictures are like dreams – messages with personalities and symbolic forms that have their own logic and place in the wider world. I pay attention to the stories that emerge on a given theme, sometimes making only one picture and at other times making hundreds of pictures.

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Before anything else the work is consistently self-portraiture. Not to see myself as a hero or victim, but simply to see myself in different guises and psychological positions. The work gives me the ability to stand outside of myself and see who I am, confront the fears and anxieties that beset most of us. Admittedly, this does not resolve the positive bias we usually place around ourselves, but sometimes these 'reflections' reveal – like a journal – hidden aspects of the self and I learn something new about my place in the world.

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