I work with nature, although in completely new terms.

In my earlier paintings, I wanted the space between the picture plane and the spectator to be active.

For me nature is not landscape, but the dynamism of visual forces, an event rather than an appearance. These forces can only be tackled by treating color and form as ultimate identities, freeing them from all descriptive or functional roles.

As the artist picks his way along, rejecting and accepting as he goes, certain patterns of enquiry emerge.

The eye can travel over the surface in a way parallel to the way it moves over nature. It should feel caressed and soothed, experience frictions and ruptures, glide and drift. One moment, there will be nothing to look at and the next second the canvas seems to refill, to be crowded with visual events.

There was a time when meanings were focused and reality could be fixed; when that sort of belief disappeared, things became uncertain and open to interpretation.

An artist's early work is inevitably made up of a mixture of tendencies and interests, some of which are compatible and some of which are in conflict