Reference to the classical world comes as standard issue in an education in Fine Art, or at least it used to. It continues to provide the substrate for so much of the superstructure of our cultural discourse. This loose and on-going series of paintings comes from a need to connect with, and mine, this rich vein of cultural bedrock. By necessity, this is a slow and piecemeal process - involving research, speculation and discovery - and resembling an epic journey.

The paintings explore a complex and layered approach to picture making. The merest fragments of suggestive representation combine with the material qualities of surface, a liberated language of colour and features of generic pictorial format. They are made over long periods of time in a process likened to the investigations of archaeology - the unearthing of shards (treasure and detritus) from accumulations of sediment, and their speculative piecing together to suggest patterns of lost form and meaning. Their titles come from ancient places, names and myth.....