The painting of still lives is an ongoing interest. They are always set up on the same yellow melamine table in my studio and either painted or drawn directly from observation. Sometimes the objects have a more personal meaning, such as the stack of tapes which are largely compilation tapes that my late brother sent me over the years; I was moved by seeing his handwriting on them, and those coded references you often share with siblings.  The flowers in jars are ones grown by my Father on his allotment after my brother died as a way, I think, of channelling his own grief. In the weeks following my brother’s death his house was full of these jars of beautiful flowers. Like myself, I think he finds it hard to communicate through words: these were his own paintings.  

Many of the still lives however, just reflect my fascination with the world of objects and their appearance and my attempts to translate that experience through painting.