The places in my paintings are sometimes based on real locations and sometimes invented – compilations of elements from photos, imagination and memory. Recently I’ve been working on a series under the theme of Suburban Geometry and I’ve found myself increasingly using a portrait format, because I’m concerned with the subjective experience of place from a very particular viewpoint. I start the painting by dividing a canvas up into basic, two-dimensional shapes (in urban and suburban environments, what we see is often defined by angular forms blocking out sections in the field of vision) and consider the landscape as an abstract composition. Then the details come back in – I’m interested by the little things that draw our attention, like a captive fish in a Chinese takeaway or the objects people have put on their internal window sills, intending them to be seen from outside.
