Drawn to water - rivers, pools, lakes, falls and streams - the sea is my favourite place to be. Over the last two years I have spent much time in Cornwall, filling my senses with wind, the sounds and smells of sea, the rough of rock and the slip of seaweed as my sketchbook crinkles with sea-mixed watercolour.

Back home, a pebble in my pocket for memory and sketches to draw from, paintings unfold during slow periods of incubation, working and reworking.

Big and tiny decisions are made as I lay down to paint, manipulating brush and knife with the rush of sea, shift of sand and scud of cloud. Solid rock is created with impasto, horizons and shorelines lost and found as glazes ebb and flow. There’s such satisfaction in laying down and taking off layers of paint to veil and unveil earlier colours and marks. There is alchemy in conjuring space and shape, sharpening or blurring with spells of indigo, cobalt, manganese and iron oxide.

More recently I have returned to my home landscape to revisit favourite places, to sit and stare and to distil something of the essence of the place in quick, rough sketches. Much of my current work is about Wiltshire’s ancient stones and burial sites. Rather than recreating a view, my work disrupts the purely picturesque, allowing me to express the experience of being in the landscape.