This exhibition of paintings represents a brilliantly sunny week in May.  Two of the large paintings are based on blurred photographs of a train journey to Dundee along the River Tay. These paintings are already quite abstract.  I photographed the hedgerow as a way of understanding natural growth in colour rather than the winter hedgerows in a series of drawings (not yet pictured here).  It is on the borderline between extreme detail and abstraction.  The smaller paintings are from  quick shots of the light through a plum tree growing over my garden wall.

All these paintings were made using the grid method, trying to be as objective as possible as I moved over and over the painting, constantly reassessing and masking off whole areas. This bypassed my brain and enabled me to see the image in a much more exciting and unexpected way, which generates infinite possibilities.  It is a fascinating process to see each section as an independent composition, so fresh.

The figurative pieces, particularly the large hedgerow painting, could be translated into abstraction. I like the idea that the shapes and form are unmediated and work as the source of a simplified painting.

The small charcoal drawings are the initial studies from a black and white photograph using the grid method.