"The paradox of painting - an old paradox known to painters of all time - is that a fictive experience is realised with real matter. Illusion is itself a paradox." (1)

These works are the result of researching the real world through drawing and observation and a studied understanding of painterly tradition and pictorial convention.

My paintings aim through visual devices to trigger a sensory response in the viewer which I hope will cause them to make their own associations and take a kind of journey. Every viewer of painting carries their own experiences and history – I endeavour that my paintings tap into that history by visual and sensory association. The viewer is invited to enter a deep believable space within the painting, that has both a real physical depth in terms of surface and an implied one into which the viewer may empathise.

My paintings reflect the importance for me of the activity of painting, the consideration of its physical possibilities, and the development of surface to its furthest potential. At times I use real materials to paint with like branches and plants which become an extension of my arm making marks that evoke their origins without being as literal as a brush might be. What evolves is hopefully a picture more than the sum of its rational parts, but it still requires the active and willing participation of the viewer.

1. Neil Frazer, Artist statement, October 2002.