“Looking Out From Trearddur Bay (No2)” 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 and the layers and marks on the streets. I grew up by the sea on Anglesey, on an island surrounded by the sea and looking at that line where see meets sky, the line that is sometimes very clear and sometimes really not so much,..

I paint like I do now because I live in all the mess and nosie of Hackney and East London, I like it, most of it, some of it, at least part of it. I’ve lived here for more than half my life now, with all the marks left by street art and the layers of life and things growing on the Captain’s Table and the music and the never much peace and quiet. I only came here because the housing was cheap after art school and I would not be painting like I do now if I wasn’t still living here.

When I lived by the sea things were rather different and I knew where to stand. Most of my work, pretty much all my work from that time was destroyed, not in a Tracey Emin kind of cleansing way but it kind of could have been. It all went down the River Severn with my weaving and everything I did before and while I was at art school, all off down the river with the garden shed it was stored in when the banks were burst and I was off on tour somewhere with some band or other.

I grew up by the sea on Anglesey, on an island, surrounded by the sea, actually it was an island off Anglesey in North Wales, miles away from art, miles and miles away from galleries or music venues or anything the teenage me wanted or needed.

I tell you all this because here we are in June 2023 and I find myself needing something that can’t really find in East London, that looking at the Skylines isn’t enough, surrounded by my East London period of paintings and looking at railway time tables and how to get back to the sea and….