The first thing to note about all of the paintings I do is that I never know what they will be until after I make them, I start with one part of the image (usually a central figure but sometime I start with a landscape with nothing in it which was the case with Winter Games), and then I sift through imagery in my studio until I find something that resonates. It’s through that process of juxtaposition that I start to find meaning, to me it’s like I’m writing a story that I don’t know the ending to. I like this way of working because it’s more exciting to me when I am discovering these paintings as I’m making them, and I think this lends itself to a more open interpretation of the work, often I’m more interested in hearing the stories that others create about of these than I am in my own. That said my work tends to revolve around themes of how we interact with the environment and each other both in the present and though history. There are also definitely specific things that I think about as I make these, with Winter games for instance, as I was painting I became fascinated by the (potential) connection between the proliferation of Dutch ice skating paintings from the mid 17th century and what is known as the “little ice age” a cooling period around the same time, in part because while I find the paintings themselves quite beautiful they may well be the result of an environmental catastrophe. In this image like in a lot of my paintings (and the Dutch ice skating scenes) the people in them carry on seemingly oblivious to the tragedy in their midst.
