In recent years I have started each painting with purely formal, open-ended, classical Abstract Expressionist intentions, until some sort of figurative scenario presents itself to me. Whereupon, with as little sacrifice as possible of the pure painting so far achieved, I encourage a believable real scene to emerge. When I drew with charcoal on paper, which is how I first became aware of this possibility in my work, it usually resulted in figures and/or animals, caught in some rather strange and sometimes funny 'in between' situations. Recently, with slowly increasing success, I have begun to achieve this in my paintings. In order to approach the technical simplicity of using just a stick of charcoal, as I do when I draw on paper, while using oil paint on canvas, I have restricted my palette to the three primary colours and white.
Taken from exhibition information "stills from dreams" at the cafe gallery 2003.
