Exhibition Statement 2004, in conversation with Samuel Walsh

Most of my painting is created through the stimulation of travel. I don't necessarily make notes or sketches when travelling to record what I see but I seem to remember the specifics of a particular landscape experienced at the time. These are not photographic memories, more like; to use a much-abused word; impressions. When I return to my studio I coat the board with a remembered tone or hue of colour and reproduce the sense I have of the place I've seen. This could just as easily occur walking around Dublin as it could in a more exotic clime.

The movement in harbours and the transit of boats or ships in docks fascinates me. To me their movement functions very much like a line in a painting that comes into the picture and then leaves. This is not a metaphor, more like a recording of movement.

My colour choices tend towards pastel or the lighter end of the palette. I'm not completely shy of strong colour but I'm wary of how it can overpower an idea so I use pure reds, yellows and blues with care. In recent work I'm using a lot of white and I think this has to do with working in Spain where colous cane be saturated out through the intense heat of the sun. Interestingly, this also creates very dark shadows!

THe only drawing I do is the drawing required to control a painting. I work directly into the wet paint and the line the is not sharp but softened by the paint. Sometimes I scrape the line our of the wet paint. I like to push paint around the surface, nudging it into corners and blending the tones so a unified image is made.

There are many happy accidents in my work. Accidents help stimulate new things in the painting that I can latch onto and sue to complete the picture. I have a very good idea about what I'm going to do before I start but I'm open to things happening that weren't planned and that means every painting is interesting without exception.