A north-facing room, and enough time

I paint slowly, in layers, in a room that only ever gets one kind of light.

My work starts outdoors — at an estuary, a reservoir edge, a stretch of coast at the hour before anything opens — but it isn’t made there. I bring back notes, a few colour swatches, and whatever I can still remember a week later. What survives that week is usually the painting.

The surfaces are built up and scraped back many times. Oil on linen for the larger pieces; raw pigment bound thin on cotton rag for the works on paper. Nothing is varnished to a shine. I want the light to sit in the surface rather than bounce off it, the way it does on plaster or on a wet stone that is just starting to dry.

I show two or three times a year and take a small number of commissions. The rest of the time I’m in the studio, or out early, looking.