The paintings arise out of a dichotomy between the romantic and the absurd. There is an inherent self indulgence and decadent nature about the act of making paintings which my work explores, as well as simply losing yourself in the act of painting. I’m interested in fusing supposed ‘high’ and ‘low’ art together (e.g cartoons and oil painting) to create work which poses certain questions about the importance given to certain ideals and artwork.

The characters in my work are essentially all my own alter ego’s in various fantasy guises, as well as satires on the ludicrous nature of wanting to be a certain type of male painter in the 21st century. There’s a large part of me that would like to be Jackson Pollock or Van Gogh or to live in my idealised version of the world they inhabited whilst I know that to work in the way they did now would be considered redundant by some people. My paintings are comical resurrections of these characters and their world that illustrate my fantasies.

Surface, colour and painterly application are also equally important aspects of the work. I use fairly intense colour that gives a hallucinogenic or dreamlike sensation, and the juicy painterly surface aids in seducing the viewer into my absurd alternative painting universe. It’s important that the humour in my work is aided by considered painterly expression so that a peculiar ambiguity arises out of the paintings, for example letting a line of smoke drift into the brain of one of my characters and out again as smoke so that the paint can embody a concept.

My work has been influenced the most by Franz Kafka, Robert Crumb, Dana Schutz and Philip Guston. I like the way all these artists employ a non-linear narrative to their work or to a series of their works that enables them to focus on the idiosyncratic descriptive qualities in either painting or storytelling. It’s the ambiguities and particulars that arise from making work in this way that inspires me.