Painting and drawing underpins most of what I do. Working in oils, enamels, acrylic and gouache, this is the platform where I can experiment with palette, texture and the balance between painterly and controlled areas.

These paintings are all quite large, some are very large. As with other work, colours are bright as I try to achieve an intensity that can be sensed. These are not works that apologise for themselves! They are classical in intent, in the sense that I order the way that paint is applied. Canvases are gessoed, sanded and grounded in Venetian Red or Red Ochre before I start and layers are allowed to dry between coats.

Titles and themes tend to reflect events that are taking place either on a personal or wider level and some people find titles such as Chav 1, Fubar or Snafu offensive.

I try to avoid commenting on content as I think that this can be quite a sticky area. There is far too much art that requires explanation, and if a work needs explaining, has it not failed to communicate on the most basic level? Needless to say, this is not a question that some welcome.

At the end of the day, painting is just coloured material on a surface, just as music is an arrangement of musical notes, but the arrangement of that material can give a work emotion and sentiment. I consider it a journey; as Albert Camus put it ". . . this slow trek, to rediscover through the detours of art those two or three great and simple images, in whose presence his heart first opened".

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