what do I ask myself when I finish a new artwork?

The intention is to achieve a kind of flow, allowing the outcomes to emerge where they will, without (too much) pre-determination. To let go of my innate need to control. The only planning with these paintings, such as it is, is a decision on the colours to be used.

It’s difficult for painting - abstract or not - to fully escape the pictorial window, where 'figures' seem to be positioned within 'space'. So how can one dissolve this foreground / background duality?

Submitting my work to an online gallery recently I was asked to provide them a statement.

This year I've been imposing limits on my creativity and paradoxically, doing so has opened up broad vistas of compositional possibility.

Marketing dictates that categorisation is essential. If you want people to find your work, it needs a label.

A painting resists the temporally structured unfolding that defines music or poetry.

The painting is covered in a mix of oil and emulsion paint but it's more of a construction and a carving than a painting.

This quote from Barnett Newman made me chuckle, "Aesthetics is to artists what ornithology is to birds".

Vulnerability comes with being an artist and the openness that's baked into our profession will attract bots, scammers and time-wasters.

The artist serves as the first audience for their new artwork, the first person to bear witness to its introduction into the world.

If we draw a cowboy on a horse, we simultaneously draw the shape around the cowboy on his horse. We create what we do and don't intend.

The square is decided for us. All we have to do is decide what to put inside it.

Play and discipline seem like opposites but masters are able to consistently achieve the delicate balance of play and discipline.

This year I'm taking an improvisational approach to painting and limiting my palette to black.

I'll usually have a very basic, imprecise plan but the objective when I draw, is just to draw.

Sometimes unnatural is the only thing that makes sense.

Convenient as it is for curators and art historians to divide art into distinct form v expression camps, creativity resists pigeonholing.

When we see a painting for the first time, or experience any work of art for the first time, we're getting an experience we've never had...

This article on one of my favourite singers, the late Damo Suzuki, got me reflecting on the improvisatory nature of my practice.