My process starts with laying down shapes that are suggestive of silhouettes, often in unexpected scale, on a surface of diluted color. This ghost-like backdrop is the initial structure from which the painting develops. Similar to viewing a garden - looking upon one area and moving your eye across - certain details capture your focus and your eyes ‘dance' around the space. In a similar way I create my artworks; with no plan, they are free to ‘grow' across the surface. I respond to the silhouette background, and working with a limited palette of acrylics, I paint - or rather draw with a paintbrush- directly into layers of dry pastel. This method creates an immediacy and forces line work to be irreplicable. The mediums interact to force a uniqueness of mark making. Charcoal and graphite are quickly and expressively applied, before, with a similar gusto, the mediums are removed or worked back into, to alter their appearance. I instinctively work big, as the act of creating the artwork is a whole body act. I think of the process as being akin to writing a narrative or a musical score. There is a beginning, a middle and an end. I will often work on several pieces around the studio walls at one time, fluidly moving from canvas to canvas, so that when all the walls are covered and paintings completed there feels to be a garden growing out from the walls.