Woman and Child on a Bicycle
oil on canvas
In my teens I was keen on Stanley Spencer. I paint in my loft. My pictures are inspired by imagination and memories of my experiences. Some are about childhood memories of N. Ireland and others are about the modern world. I make rough sketches for compositions. It may take months before I feel able to start a painting of a particular subject. I make very many changes while doing a painting. I’m torn between realism and reducing things to more simple forms. I don’t like to use photographs, because they may include detail which is not relevant to the true subject of the picture. I think that painting is able to reveal something of a world which lies beyond the familiar world of time and space. I paint because there is nothing else that I want to do.