I rarely plan a painting, instead I allow ideas swirling in my head to guide much of the process. I start a painting with some gestural drawing in thin black paint onto a plain canvas. This is a very spontaneous and enjoyable stage where paint is flicked, smudged and dried to give a wide range of interesting marks. After this I add painted shapes in colour, allowing my spontaneous drawings to both suggest a way forward and to provide something to work against. In total this is a very organic process, and prone to many changes of emphasis and direction!

This is the story of a painting called ‘reef life’.