Sixteen squares A, acrylic and oil on canvas, 122 x 122cm, 1994

About the non-figurative work

The subject matter of this work is wide ranging and is not primarily stimulated by the visual world, but nor is it exclusively conceptual. Often it is a mixture of both where the actual process of painting also plays a big part in the end product.

The starting point can have a visual or emotional trigger (and is often clearly there to see — the landscape, the sea, ships, boats, people, animals, in other words, the world about us) but other paintings do have a conceptual basis (perhaps concerned simply with colour or movement; or, alternatively, working within pre-determined rules of engagement).

Some paintings try to balance shapes and colours so that the sum of the parts achieve a visual harmony. Others deliberately aim for discord or imbalance. One group of paintings stemmed from attempting to draw a perfect circle on a canvas — but from a distance — which was doomed to failure in that respect, but managed to produce lines of colour and movement beyond what might have been possible with more conscious control. Another group, deliberately referencing the landscape, had to conform to very rigid divisions of the canvas. Somehow they still retained that essence of the landscape in the end product.

There is some sort of story behind each painting, but knowing that story is not important. The work ultimately has to stand or fall entirely on its own merits.