" The estate is just a little bit older than me. There were no stories about it growing up. The only ones were stories we were making up.
So my dad said you will be the old guys, the first part of the history of a place like this.
But like me, the estate is putting on a bit of weight, falling apart a bit; it's got receding hairline. My work is a self- portrait."
"He started taking pictures of the estate out of sentimentality but what he found was a "blank page" to form his own work."
"There was no washing lines or back-to back houses like the Northern tradition of being working class. Here, if you were growing up in the suburbs your identity was blank. Part of this was trying to reinvent a tradition."
"When he found himself returning to the same scenes the paintings began to be as much about his won sense of memory and loss as the landscapes real decay."
"It is not about place- it is quite abstract. The painting is of how far away you are from there. It is a tethering so you know how far you've come. Each one is a marker , is place is a lens for how I see myself now. Time becomes compressed."
" There is a realism about them, the trees look like trees, the grass looks like grass. It has to or else it would be ironic. My art tutor said my work is loaded with contradictions . It is to do with class or with a British landscape."
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