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

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.

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.

I never make studies from nature. They would get in the way. I make use of my mind.

Painting is, I think, inevitably an archaic activity and one that depends on spiritual values.

I think this lack of a center has something to do with the loss of certainties that Christianity had to offer

I couldn’t get near what I wanted through seeing, recognizing and recreating, so I stood the problem on its head. I started studying squares, rectangles, triangles and the sensations they give rise to It is untrue that my work depends on any literary impulse or has any illustrative intention. The marks on the canvas are sole and essential agents in a series of relationships which form the structure of the painting.