My current work investigates the dichotomy between figuration and abstraction using simple characters. These hybrids sit somewhere between real animals, fantasy creatures and humanlike forms that act as recognisable icons, reassuringly familiar. They can be friendly companions that express feelings of love, trust, hope, joy and calm. However, they can also act as vessels to explore the emotional uncanny, unsettled states of mind like feelings of fear, uncertainty, anxiety, shame and isolation.

As a parallel and integral investigation, the characters are evolving visually, in a sometimes fractured way. Ranging from graphic ultra pop, through to painterly historical figuration and modern abstract disintegration, a space opens to raise questions about meaning and the act of painting itself.

My works are made using oil paint on primed linen or canvas on wooden stretchers, and sometimes on paper. I make preliminary studies in a variety of media. Many of the painting techniques I use are derived from studying Western European painters of the Renaissance and Baroque, and Modern Masters. I sometimes use a coloured ground and techniques including grisaille underpainting, scumbling and glazing. When I use glazing I build up the surface of the work to create colours that can only happen when one colour is applied on top of another. Sometimes I work alla prima wet on wet, and concentrate on the immediacy and energy of gesture. Here I push and pull the subject matter back and forth between figuration and abstraction, working with colour and spatial relationships to disrupt recognition through displacement and disintegration.

I have many influences and preoccupations, but my way of thinking or spiritual connection is not easy to pin down. There is a restlessness. My thoughts often feel like two worlds colliding, the East and the West. I am of Anglo-Japanese descent and much of my work centres on my search for the meaning of identity.