My paintings show small, unexceptional actions undertaken by figures, often in isolation. Prised from their broader narratives, the significance of these moments is trapped or located in the act of painting. Subjects include the troubled lives of early 20th century English painters; the journey of Nicolas Jenkins through Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time; the saints and my own family. Each character is seen as a rather mundane context, though what I hope is apparent too is the internal wrestling that each is, to a greater or lesser extent, engaged in.

An interest in Palmer, Sutherland and the English etching revival led to a pratical exploration of etching, and the fresh possibilities that this offered to picture-making inturn fed back into the studio paintings.

AA2A will enable a new suite of etchings to be made. Significantly, through this process I hope that new compositional strategies will be discovered and a fresh vocabulary of marks will be revealed, that these findings will then be available to me within my paintings. I am interested in the mutually informative possibilities of a parallel etching and painting practice and aim to explore this through this access period.