“What is of importance in painting is paint. Paint can be colour. Paint becomes painting when colour establishes surface.”  Jules Olitski ‘Painting in Colour’

I produce images that demand the total attention of the viewer. These images, or paintings as I prefer to call them, lend themselves to the pure physical essence of painting.

My interest lies in issues that are unique to the language of paint. The paintings displayed before you were born out of a journey exploring the pure enjoyment of working with the material. The investigative task of a painting’s creation, the tactile, physical state, the passion and explosive energy generated during the process, is as important to me as the ‘finished piece’.

The spontaneous marks on the canvas declare the gestures that have made them, giving the paintings a thrilling physical immediacy, the surfaces alive with incident and contrast, and absolutely ‘present’ in the space of the spectator.
This intuitive, playful, gestural but nonetheless serious approach sets out to define a coherent visual language between the various forms and marks. A considered weighing and balancing act continues with explorations into form, line and space. However, for me the most important tool in the box is colour.
A direct powerful use of colour will deify a mark, for without colour the mark would cease to exist.

“When the colour has the greatest fullness, the form contains the greatest richness.”  Paul Cezanne

I always try to establish a physical relationship with my paintings, from the making of the canvasses to the mixing of the colours, through to the hand made tools with which I smear, layer, scrape, flick, dip, spray, pour and shake to apply the media.

I wish my paintings to be perceived, sensed even, rather than understood. The experience of looking takes the form of a physical response the reflective way in which we respond to a painted surface is a very special moment, a quiet contemplation to be savoured in these times of frantic turmoil.