As an artist, I am interested in painting as a process related to human perception. I think that painting has the capacity to deliver an image that is truer than can be communicated by other means. Our eyes are sensory organs that deliver stimuli to the brain for processing. For the artist to paint, the brain must download information to the hand. The construction of a painting from any kind of reference thus reflects both current observations and also other material/visual experiences collected in the brain of the artist. A painting can be thought of as a series of marks, edited according to what the artist finds visually important and (hopefully) is able to communicate through the painting to a later viewer.

A related artistic interest is the idea of a painting as a kind of witness statement: the artist paints an image that is based on lived visual realities. Therefore, painting by hand remains relevant as an individual human activity even in an age in which we are surrounded by machine-made images. Painting from life – still life, landscape or figure – always feels luxurious to me, but I am beginning to think of it as an important antidote to our increasingly tech-y reality.

Many of the paintings I have made recently have been meditations on the ruinous practice of air-bombing, which has unfortunately touched my life in many ways. This practice originated relatively recently in human history (with the invention of airplanes) but has now become a preferred weapon of war. A blunt weapon, it inflicts horrible damage on thousands of non-combatants as well as creating untold environmental effects. My most recent series of paintings present moments in air-bombing history from Guernica (1937) to the present day.