“This black & white image of a student's bedroom wall provides an insight to their thought processes. Generations of young people have found expression in this way, something that I believe as parents we should never seek to stifle.”
“This piece won the prize of "Outstanding Watercolor" in BoldBrush Painting Competition - May 2016. There are infinite number of designs in nature and surroundings. It is the purest of pleasures to explore and translate them into paintings. I have tried to illustrate the effect of light in impressionistic colours. Ghats in Varanasi are riverfront steps leading to the banks of the River Ganges. The city has 87 ghats. Most of the ghats are bathing and puja ceremony ghats, while a few are used exclusively as cremation sites.”
“For EMPTINESS I followed my normal creative process. Some time before starting I had the idea of creating an octopus and when I could commit time for creating it, I mentally start defining the details, the materials, the shape, etc. With a set image in my brain, I start transforming it directly into the final art piece. In this case, EMPTINESS is created around the eyes. They are two polished corals I bought several years ago in my beloved Panjiayuan market in Beijing. When I show them I fell in love with them and bought them immediately. It was just a matter of time that I link the sea creature with the coral eyes... The materials used are sheets of aluminum riveted together sheet by sheet. This technique allows me to give the desired movement I wanted this piece to have, with the eight tentacles in a twirling and twisting-like position.”
“Just imagine: you are standing by the seashore, calm and quietness surrounding you, and you hear only breaking waves and watching the sky metamorphosis. The voice of the sea fills you with calmness and harmony, clear vision, eternal wisdom and creative power. Listening to the sea is like listening to your soul.”
“The mountain shows up often in my work. It may not be immediately apparent, but you can feel its presence through the colors. It's a "place" to go to for joyful wonder and discovery. You just clamber around, up and down among its crags and rocks and treasures and feel happy.”
“Cubism is one of the most interesting and important artistic styles that inspired the recent history of contemporary art. Each contemporary artist in a certain stage of his or her development passes through the school of cubism and this drawing is my homage to this great period of art.”
“'Arcadia' is an imaginative landscape painting executed in an expressionistic style. It represents something of a departure for me in terms of technique and approach but is still primarily concerned with the cyclical nature of growth and renewal. There are elements of Surrealism in the exploration of natural imagery and some will see connections with the work of the English painters Graham Sutherland and Samuel Palmer. A tangle of brambles and shrubs such as hawthorn, blackthorn and thistle compete for limited resources in a continuing struggle for light and air. The heavy impasto oil paint is applied with a variety of tools including including brushes and knives. The tactile surface is an integral part of this large painting and there is a powerful sculptural quality to this work. I have been influenced by the contemporary German artist Anselm Kiefer and the landscape, fields and hedgerows of the Cambridgeshire fenlands.”
“This is the view of a fantastic village of Greece in Messinia. The village is called Verga. What was interesting during the creation of the painting is that I put so much white colour at the bottom of the painting because the water was so clear at that point. Also instead of blue, the dominant colour of the sea is the green.”
“The movement of long trails of yellow flowers against the background of green foliage was the inspiration for this abstract impressionist painting. Whilst driving recently I noticed the explosion of colour and movement in these trees, particularly in a garden where they had a group of several trees. The oil paint is applied and built in layers using a palette knife to capture the movement and keeping detail to a minimum to encourage the viewer to imagine the detail themselves and engage with the scene.”
“A few times a year in the morning I am surprised to discover balloons outside my windows. Le Puy-en-Velay, a town near where I live, is an international gathering place for hot air balloons. It is every time a wonder to behold them in the morning light through the mists.”
