“We were created to look at one another, weren't we?” Edgar Degas.

The direct gaze can be compelling, offering frank emotional engagement, but this vital connection is increasingly absent in our digital age, when we look at each other mostly on our smartphones.

Against the trend, and Inspired by my love of early Flemish portraiture, I search the faces of people around me to find inspiration for my paintings.

The resulting portraits are intended to pose questions about time and place and perhaps to suggest a narrative.

In more recent work, incorporating two or more figures, I’m beginning to consider the emotional implications of the way we position ourselves physically in relation to others, and the possibility of recreating those tensions within a painting.

For me, the excitement of producing art is inextricably linked to the unpredictability of its progression, the ever present preoccupation of striving to achieve a definitive piece of work."