I’ve always been fascinated by the infinite variety of colours and textures that surround us. Like many of us, I loved art as a child and continued to paint as a hobby when I thought my school studies couldn’t include something as “frivolous” as art.

Visiting Italy and Austria as a teenager and seeing paintings from the Baroque was a revelation. For years after, I tried to capture a little of their dramatic rendering of light and shadow – basically painting in monochrome. In recent years, my focus has been on colour and the endless combinations of hues, pigments and effects that I can achieve with paint, and a recent change to a limited selection of modern, powerful, synthetic pigments has opened up new avenues to explore.