'I cannot help but wonder whether my paintings, which are so much about the perception of landscape, are also about the perception of loss, for what I once had or thought that I had and would have again. I am going into my workspace repeatedly and starting over: going forward anyway.

I was born and raised in England, which must have something to do with it. There was no really wild nature in the south of the country, but one made one's own. By the time I found myself engaged in the drawing and painting of it, it was clear that I was involved in making my own world, a place where imagination, history, future and desire co-existed in a fragile bubble. I used to visit a row of Lombardy poplars in a field with a barn. Then, almost the same time I read Gerard Manley Hopkin's poem, Binsey Poplars, they were felled, and I never went there again.

Now I plant my own trees and make my own landscape, which for a time will be a reference to mine for that which I still need to do.’