When painting I am walking a tightrope. I might slip off at any moment. Sometimes, when I am brave, I can hop along the rope or even somersault. These are the moments when I paint not from the visual world but from somewhere inside me.

"Pastiche, old-fashioned, dull, commercial, predictable." These are some of the traps that lie in wait for the figurative artist. It is often tempting to try to join the avant garde and abandon myself to wild inspiration and then many of these traps would disappear.
However, the rope, which is the figurative tradition, the taught discipline necessary to paint an object as it appears in reality, is the only way that I know of attempting to produce a beauty that is comprehensible. Artists who do not follow the guidelines of nature have to invent a vocabulary of their own and this is frequently only understood by the initiated.

The study of reality gives structure, depth and detail to the picture. The abstract work from inside gives magic but for me a picture needs depth as well as magic.

When a stranger walks up to me and says "ten years ago we bought a painting of yours. We love it more and more. I don't know which child to leave it to," then I know that it is all worthwhile.