Words are the vehicle for the writer, the poet and the thespian. As I am about to demonstrate, I am none of these. Instead my imaginative skill is applied to representations of the natural world or figments of my imagination through the medium of paint. Or, as Paul Critchley puts it, I “sit in a room and spend my days using a stick with hairs at one end to put coloured mud either carefully or haphazardly onto a piece of cloth”. The result can be pleasing and, on the rare occasion, transcend to the poetic level that I strive for. But, as Sickert allegedly stated, “never believe what an artist says, only what he does”.

Close This Box