Working with thoughts and memories, drawings, photography and found imagery, I invent scenarios, creating narratives of places and times that characters exist within. Scenes are connections to feelings. Often works are my notion of who a person is or was and where a place is or might be. I create worlds that may seem real, but are inventions. My work evokes liminal spaces; I rarely paint actual places. Working titles can be important as a starting point. My process is one of trialing various compositional ideas through photo or digital collage, which I enlarge via projection or photocopying. These I draw onto canvas or board before defining more fully in paint. I use acrylic paint, usually acrylic gouache, preferring its flat matte qualities. I juxtapose ‘realist’ renderings of figures, structures and objects with spontaneous and freer mark-making: washes, dabbed and daubed textures, stains, transparent glazes and dry brush strokes. At times I use methods such as masking, layering, printing or stencilling. I’m often preoccupied with surface qualities and compositional lines. In the process of underpainting then overpainting, I deliberately retain incidental features in the final work: pencil marks, paint runs, drips and splashes. Recent works are inspired by family members, some are self-referential. In this respect my current work is a form of portraiture, though not exclusively. ‘Daisy’ (Acrylic on Linen 88 x 122 cm, 2023) is a commissioned work featuring my grandaughter.