Needless to say they’re all based on the same image. I found it at a flea market in the east end some years ago. It’s a very powerful photo, both in terms of its technical brilliance and its ability to engage the viewer. My challenge ultimately was to translate some of the atmosphere captured so perfectly in the photo onto the canvas. There’s much to take in when looking at the photo itself, the crowd, the boxers, the space, textures and imagined colours of the scene (imagined because the image is sepia), based of course on my memories of being amongst a crowd of that nature during my formative years growing up in an environment very much accustomed to such events. I often use photos in my work directly relating to personal experience. I like to look at the past in order to understand myself, both then and now. It allows me an opportunity to inhabit the characters who make up the scene, each one representing figures from my past and present. Finding myself in amongst the scenes I depict is always key in deciding where and when to finish the piece. This is a series very much in its early stages. I hope to build on what is started and see where it goes.

I hope you can interpret something from this short description of these works and their relationship to me. Personality in a work is something I strive towards achieving, sometimes it works sometimes not. However, I find that by working repeatedly from the same image certainly puts me closer to the person I feel often eludes me.