It was ironic that there I was finally painting the pictures I'd always wanted to paint and feeling very much at home in the countryside, and I ended up working in New York City, which is definitely the archetypal city.

You do not see fairies through the eyes, you see them through the heart and that took me a long time to learn because I was always trying to see them through my eyes.

Anytime that is ‘betwixt and between’ or transitional is the faeries’ favorite time. They inhabit transitional spaces: the bottom of the garden, existing in a space between manmade cultivation and wilderness. Look for them in the space between nurture and nature, they are to be found at all boarders and boundaries, or on the edges of water where it is neither land nor lake, neither path nor pond. They come when we are half-asleep. They come at moments when we least expect them; when our rational mind balances with the fluid irrational.

I paint the spirit and soul of what I see.

In the 20th century, artists did a great disservice to fairies. They painted fairies in a way that was shallow and trite. So when people see my stuff, they suddenly realize the depth of fairies.

I started studying as an artist, but I got fed up with the fact that you can paint terrible pictures and if you explain them in an erudite way it's called great art. I thought this was rubbish.

Part of what I feel is that the so-called bad fairies are really only there to get you to pay some attention. They trick you up until you're lying flat on your back and you literally have another point of view. They're about loosening up being rigid. They trip you over to break the barrier between you and the world. So their so-called "badness" actually can be quite instrumental in helping you with things.