Painting is a necessity for me. It is what defines me and as I get older this increases as my other roles decrease. It has always been the medium that I have trusted most and felt most at ease with. Perhaps this is because I came to reading and writing late or because of dyslexia.
A painting arrives to me in a very set way. Maybe I have watched a film or read a poem, and like a trout with a fly over it's mouth I am hooked. My most creative time is when I go to bed. I call these electric nights where my creative imagination goes into overdrive. Normally an idea for a painting will drop into my brain like a slide into a projector. I literally see how I want the painting to look. Often the painting process can be long and drawn out but I will always try and finish the work. I am very practical and pragmatic. However I am always on the lookout for a chance or a mistake. Something like when the glass on Marcel Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare got broken.
Actually Duchamp is an artist whose work I admire enormously. I think that the most important aspect of any creative process is the idea. I am rarely excited my conventional painting, I want to see the artists thought process and evidence of a struggle.
Most of my art has a political edge to it, sometimes this is subtle and otherwise more direct. I think it is very important to highlight injustices particularly if you are going to undertake such a selfish activity as painting. I have undertaken a few paintings about the troubles in northern Ireland and another subject that has always cropped up is the plight of the marginalised. The first serious work I undertook was a portrait of a black woman with a baby and a can of Coke at her side.
In terms of my influences, they are as varied as Velazquez to Marlene Dumas. However the London school of painting's artists have been very influential. During the late eighties I worked with the dealer James Kirkman. While there I got to meet Auerbach, Bacon and Freud. The latter was very generous to me despite me nearly destroying his masterpiece After Watteau. Another artist who I return to frequently is Philip Guston. I loved the fact that he had the balls to switch from abstraction to figuration. I think it is important to change and evolve and artist who only paints one way I will always be suspicious of. Being truthful is essential in the creative process. I want my paintings to be theatrical and dominate a room, if they have an air of mystery about them and occasionally humour well so much the better. If only one person understands me then I have succeeded.