I was born a painter. It is the way I live, think and breathe. Everything I know about painting comes from a deep commitment to a lifelong practice.

I work very slowly. Each piece is enriched with time, energy, ideas and light - qualities that are given back to the observer as they live with a painting.

I have always felt that my work is like a river that flows through me and as long as I listen to it and allow it to move freely it has an intelligence of its own. Sometimes, if I don't paint for a few days, the river moves on without me and that work is lost. Even when I have finished a painting the river still runs through it and it will change and deepen.

My whole life goes into my work. Images and themes unfold themselves - flames, leaves, sparks, earth...some of my work is figurative, exploring moments of rapt attention, maybe feeling music like a coloured wave, listening to a bird sing at dawn, the velvet warmth of skin against skin as two figures sleep entwined or a figure touching the earth...

I always listen to music as I paint. I love James Macmillan and Ben Britten in particular. I love the voices of tenor Mark Padmore and the mezzo Alice Coote.I listen deep and I listen loud, making a space to work in and also flooding the paint with the sound.

Often my paintings tell me things I could never have understood without the experience of making them. They are always true.

I was born and have always lived on the edge of the English Lake District. I am not a landscape painter but the huge skies, slatey lakes and becks and soft blue fells have continuously woven themselves into my work. I am rooted in this landscape.

Where do I see myself in relation to other painters? I align myself with the C20th British Modernists. I love the work of Ben Nicholson, Cecil Collins and Breon O'Casey. I also feel a deep connection to the art of the Stone Age, the cup and ring carvers and the Venus makers. I think we respond with the same instincts and work with the same river of ideas. It is universal and eternal.

Please note the small dimensions of my paintings and the fact that I do not date work. All work is titled and signed on the back.