I want my paintings to engage people.  I want the viewer's eye to travel around finding interest in every square inch, for even tranquil harmonious pieces to be dynamic and show diversity. This is sometimes achieved through my choice of tools, modifying the application of paint, ensuring contrast, using colour or layering paint to give depth. I can't make two the same if I try - I'll create a series of like pieces in one time frame and they 'grow up together' but its a process of continual evolution and response that can't be replicated.

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Some collections are lively, dynamic and expressive while others are beautiful, soft and tranquil. I always seek balance in a piece which makes it easy to enjoy on the wall, prevents a jarring unsettled feeling and can be endlessly contemplated at the viewers choice.

I feel my eye for balance and composition have been evolving and informing my choices as a painter thanks to digital photography and especially the camera-phone - cropping and adjusting images to get it 'just right'.  Living in the countryside and spending childhood holidays in the wilds of Scotland and Wales, I think a lot of my abstracts resolve into landscapes through a love of open spaces.  

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I work on small collections of like pieces but as my style, mark-making, media and inspiration evolve the work can develop rapidly in new directions. There are similarities across all collections as my visual language becomes more personal and I certainly have a favoured colour palette (for example I find black jarring which isn't an outcome I'm looking for in my work currently so my base neutral dark is a rich deep grey called 'Paynes Grey' that has its main base in blue, so the outcome is like slate not coal), so blues, calm purples and mute browns are my 'naturals' not black, greens and brick tones.