Chance, gesture and the possibilities of oil paint play a large part in my approach to painting. Drawing on long walks in the Irish landscape and memories of the enchantment that wild country lanes held for me as a child, I don’t seek to represent nature, but forge what I see as a kind of landscape of the mind. Post-war American Expressionism, Irish Neolithic rock carvings and the intuitive flow of drawing inform the work. Ancient undulating rhythms, lines and patterns have long been part of a universal understanding of nature, and that sense of timelessness and connection is what I seek to harness in my work The paintings’ first marks begin on the floor, and layers and erasure and reapplying can take months, sometimes years, to find a kind of resolution. By dividing the picture space into two or three sections, or creating a frame, like a picture within a picture, I want to create a kind of dialogue between two opposing painting strategies: a deeply layered painted surface and a more intuitive gestural approach. In this way the space achieves a form of dissonance that I find interesting. I think of it as remembering or seeing a place in a present time, but interpreting it in different ways, reflecting the multifaceted ways we experience the world.