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Painting has been my life from as far back as I can remember. For me, the process of painting is a personal dialogue which explores the relationships between us and the perceived world. In a sense it's the activity that lets me know that I'm living. My influences are quite varied - from Masaccio to Pontormo, Turner to Sutherland, Pollock to Hodgkin. It's not always easy to see how these influences work, but these are some of the artists that make me want to paint. I expect my paintings are some kind of synthesis of all the above, I don't really know. I'm not even sure that it's necessary to know. Literature is for telling the story, art is for telling how the story feels. I've travelled a good deal in Britain, and also travelled extensively in Europe, the United States, North Africa and a small part of Asia, sometimes staying for extended periods. However despite this somewhat nomadic existence I do have a natural home, though it's not really a place as such. It's a series of views. across Morecambe Bay and north amongst the fells and panoramas of the Lakeland hills, views I've obsessed over since childhood.
This current project has been one that I have been promising myself for some time, thirty years in fact, as long as I've been working on other projects. The romance of Lakeland has never been far from my heart and thoughts. Now I'm working on it full time at last. The paintings explore my fascination with Cumbria's true nature, the balance of the extraordinary light and the weight of weather, and how these elements inform the landscape below. I became interested in pursuing the project with Shawn, a lifelong friend, because I feel a sympathy between his aims and objectives and my own, as his wonderful sculpture seeks to explore the very nature of the stone fabric that was hewn out by this same weather over millions of years to create this majestic region. Rydal is, of course, the link for us with the continuity of artistic effort in describing the Lake District, a tradition going back over two hundred years, inspiring poets, writers and artists, and was the obvious place to us to have our opening exibition.
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