The paintings are kind of set in the past, present, and future all at once.

There are absences, but there are also presences. It's about how painting can evolve its own abstractions. I didn't know the painting was going to be about that, but it has to have that journey I have to learn something, I have to end up somewhere I didn't expect to be, otherwise, I don't think it's painting.

There are things that inform the works, but that doesn't go anywhere near what you're actually looking at.

Using painting as a metaphor for consciousness is what I'm interested in.

The paintings don't exist outside themselves. There's no lead photograph off the internet or anything like that. It all comes from my mind and it's a bit like a little movie each time - how do I get the props, the setting, the time of day, the light, the action.

I felt like I had reached the end of a period of life, where the work was jumping about and pushing something new every time. I wanted to dial it back and create a language that was stable and deep.

I'm a quiet person, I'm not a flashy art world person. I'm in the studio in the middle of nowhere. There's sheep and fields. The work has to be authentic in that way.