I’m a traditional figurative artist, making oil paintings and watercolours. My visual research can be quite wide-ranging. I’ve used all kinds of imagery as a point of departure for my paintings; from cinematic film stills, photojournalism, daguerreotypes and Victorian photographic archives. I frequently accept portrait commissions, inviting sitters to my South London studio to be photographed.
I have an enduring love for watercolour painting. I frequently experiment with the medium, to maximise opportunities for it to seep and stain in beautiful, unpredictable ways. As I started making my series of boxer’s heads around twenty years ago, I recall being struck by how unlikely this ‘genteel’ medium might seem in the depiction of violence, pain and struggle. Young men in my hometown of Derry were deeply attracted to boxing, traditionally the case in many working-class communities.
My recent nude studies are quite small in scale. I think of them as a rehearsal for larger works I might make. My works have frequently been compared with those of Lucien Freud, but I like to think they address more carefully the vulnerability of exposure, without being exploitative or cruel. I frequently like to view my models from above- a birds-eye view creates an unusual relationship between the viewer and the subject and can feel slightly unsettling, allowing for a departure from the life room tradition.
