Painting landscapes was not the cool thing to do when I was at school; the focus was concept and theory. Artists in my sphere created indoors in the studio, working out ideas and rendering them in their chosen medium, attempting to convey assessments of a Postmodern world. For many years, my work was studio bound; and as a constant traveler, I was always hurrying back to get creative. However, one day atop a mountain, whilst thinking about the works of Emily Carr, Paterson Ewen and Robert Smithson, I had an epiphany: "It does not matter what the subject is. Potentially, an artist can equally convey a concept in a plein air landscape. Why not?"

To that end, I now paint constantly what is at hand, on the spot -- forests, seascapes, falling snow, and the odd mountain. As a person with raging synesthesia, to capture the essence of a place is something I feel best done in person, from life, with the wind and sound and tastes and smells whirling around you. There is power, joy and physical challenge in painting outdoors alla prima. The extremes of climate, oneness with the environment, and the sociable aspects of this method of making art appeal to me greatly.

Pushing the boundaries of traditional Plein Air is of interest to me. A colour fanatic, I have hauled up to 48 different tubes of paint to a location. For a time, I explored the possibilities of a far more limited split-primary palette of two blues, two reds, and a duo of my favourite colour, yellow. More recently, incorporating mark - making and some abstraction while working in the field has produced results that seem to challenge my past work, and I am inspired by this new direction.