What the artist attempts to do is to try and tell a story. Attempting to give physical expression to a story that's internal.

Usually I'll drive to certain locations over and over again, over a course of months really. And then it might just be I hit it at the right time, and the right light. And then I might go to that location over and over again, and then what happens in that lag time where - the image sort of locks in - all of a sudden I see it in my mind's eye.

I'm very moved by the fact that people are drawn into the pictures and that they do bring their own history and their own interpretation to the photograph. I think that's why they work in a certain way.

I think that's the nature of representation. No matter what it will disappoint, it will fail in some way.But that's also part of the magic of art. If every picture met my expectation in exactly the right way, there'd be no mystery; there'd be no gap between what's in my head and the picture I make.

I don't deliberately look for something dark or bleak or disconnected, in fact that's not something I'm even conscious of in the work as I'm making it. I'm always trying to create beauty, reveal hope, show the sense of longing that exists in isolation and loneliness, and capture the search for something greater inside all of my subjects.

I think maybe the figures - that's a good word - the figures in my pictures are stand-ins for my own need to make a connection.

It is really important to have an obsessive need to construct something, to understand something from your own experience.