I have never before deliberately set out to make work directly from music, film or literature despite the fact that, along with the visual arts, they form a vital backdrop and soundtrack to my life. It would have been great to make work directly from music, perhaps The Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss, Born Slippy by Underworld, Different Trains by Steve Reich, but I love the abstract unpindownable quality music has and my hand wouldn't find an image.I am passionate about film but the pictures are already there and so clear.

Writing was my last refuge in a way and when Aidan sent me the script to the play ‘There Came A Gipsy Riding’ I found it sharp, funny and very sad.  More than anything it was particularly poignant and resonant at the time.  What I wanted to do was try to find, not force, the moments in the play that mattered most to me. 

 In ‘I Found Him’ I had been working on an odd painting that looked a bit like two pages of a book. On the right there was a completely accidental bit of coastline and on the left an ambiguous space just waiting for something to happen. Figures appeared and disappeared then finally a desolate little red figure arrived stretched out, completely alone.

The title for 'The Rock Breaks' is a quote from the play about how the grieving parents are trying not to crack, but inevitably do. The points at which they break and are at their most vulnerable are for me the most powerful.  This painting was a 'hell and back' painting - one that I felt may never go in the right direction. Then two figures (from drawings of interesting objects on my cousin's mantlepiece) emerged. I had no idea if they were going to be important but they soon became the only focus for the painting. Everything else was obliterated.