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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

What if I draw a broken window and then cut it up and re-arrange it to create another level of brokenness?

This piece went through many changes before I considered it finished. It was the same panels of wood but was it the same painting?

One warm weekend in September 2020 I started putting paint down on eight 24 x 24 inch panels.

Whilst there is a modus operandi of iteration, destruction and re-creation common to all my pieces, each presents a unique set of challenges

If something anaesthetic dulls the senses, the aesthetic experience wakens and stimulates the senses - not pleasantly necessarily.

Overall, I was satisfied with the result but there was one part of the painting that my eye kept returning to. Something irritating.

It was my teacher's last day before retiring and I’d dashed off a drawing in minutes. On seeing my sorry effort he made me do it again.