Why I keep coming back to the water

A lot of what I create starts the same way, a walk somewhere near water. The Thames near Henley, a harbour on holiday, the way light sits on a wet slipway early in the morning. I don't sketch on site, usually. I just look for a long time and take lots of snaps on my camera and something about the mood of it stays with me until I get back to the studio.

The rowing pieces come from years of watching boats move, that particular rhythm, oars in and out, the wake settling behind them and the noise of the movement in water. I'm not trying to paint an accurate boat. I'm trying to paint what it feels like to watch one.

That's really the throughline in all my work: not a place exactly, but the feeling of being in it.