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Structure, balance and lighting are the main areas in my work at the moment. When I first began painting I tried out various styles experimenting with perspective and different mediums and so on. But I kept noticing the lack of depth in a 2d painting and the more detail I added to things like trees for example, the flatter the artwork seemed. So my focus became how to make images appear more three dimensional and solid looking. I did this by simplifying the subject matter and eventually developed a geometric style where each item appeared as cube-like structures and angled planes.
Constantly modifying and updating this theme, every so often I made breakthroughs with a particular aspect. A notable one (2005-2008) was opening up or 'unfolding' these geometric shapes which resulted in a lighter and more paper like aesthetic. Then a maths theory (combinatorics) in a science journal got me completely rethinking about the layout in a painting and I began mixing figurative and landscape elements together (2010- 2011) so that a person would be constructed from street objects for example. Lighting became a more important feature too especially when painting things like traffic signals, figuring out how they would light up their nearby surroundings with these new rearranged compositions. My 3d animation experience also provided a good knowledge base for lighting too, and I aimed at treating each painting as if it were a 3d cg environment. Another development was 'cutout' shapes(2015-). This not only improved the balance in the image, but also helped with the depth too as the cutout sections revealed the shapes/structures behind. Spin off ideas from this cutout theme happened too like 'paired' or 'mirrored' shapes which fed back into the maths interest again and so on. In terms of inspiration, firstly there are numerous artists in different galleries around the world and online whose work I study, enjoy and learn from. Then there are themes such as shop awnings or cafe/hotel/restaurant/pub umbrellas that often appear in my early work as I love their simple 3d canopy quality in the spaces they occupy. Trees are another big influence too, not just with their designs but also the amazing array of colour,texture, leaf and flower translucent properties and so on especially Spring blossom + Autumn leaves. Then there's the digital art world and after 10+ years experience creating cg work, I still avidly follow all the developments happening at the moment like Unreal Engine 5.5 'Lumen', 'Nanite' + 'Megalights' and Nvidia 'RTX mega geometry', all of which I find fascinating + keep learning from. Lego products are another passion especially their Ninjago range as is a lot of Japanese culture with Origami, Kirigami, Chiyogami, Transformers and Gunpla robots. My residency with Andrew James Art in Shanghai was another massive inspiration - incredible buildings,lights + hazy atmospheres made a big impact. Finally there's the random day to day stuff such as food packaging design in supermarkets or brightly coloured plastic barriers on a construction site for example that keep providing ideas for future work.
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