Charmouth A, oil on board, 13 x 18cm, 2011

About the figurative work

I have always drawn and painted figuratively as part of my personal and working life. Usually, very much working drawings, used to understand or illustrate something too difficult to explain in any other way. They weren't intended as anything more than a means to an end.

The figurative work in this section grew out of a natural desire to record places and people. Usually, the intention was simply to record the subject but I found that my particular interest was to render the subject as economically as possible and still retain the essence of that place or person. Some of these images have a lot in common with my more abstract work in terms of working method and particular visual concerns.

Most of this work is done from life (unlike the abstract work which is much more studio-bound and takes much longer) so there is a freshness and vigour about some of the work – often recording the changing weather as much as anything – which would be difficult to replicate in a studio, or even on a larger scale.

Some of the most recent work could easily be classified under the non-figurative section. And, it is probably true that some of the 'abstract' work could more correctly be classified as figurative – but for the moment they remain separate, if only because of my original intentions when starting a particular painting.