“Looking Out From Trearddur Bay (No2)” – oil on board, 45cm x 55cm, a painting from the last century. The paintings I make these days, as I have said many times, are mostly because I live in the city, in Hackney, in amongst all the noise ans the layers and marks on the streets. I grew up by the sea on Anglesey, surrounded by the sea and the line where see meets sky, the line that is sometimes very clear and sometimes really not so much,

I dug out No2 from one of the many portfolios in the corner of the studio because I saw No.1 hanging (in an awful frame) on a wall a few days ago, both painted from the same place on the cliffs of Wales back in the last century. Every time I go to somewhere like Folkestone or Margate, I just want to stay there and paint that line where sea meets sky, I think I might be done with London now. I don’t feel that satisfied with either painting but there both make me want to get back to looking out to that line (and no, I really can’t bring myself to paint from photographs rather than from being there)

Someone asked me why I don’t paint Hackney, most of my paintings are paintings of Hackney, of what I see and feel in the city, the marks of the street, the layers, the broken walls, the growth… Doing a lot of thinking about the where and why I paint at the moment…