In an early short story the American author John Updike writes: "The task of art is to give the mundane its beautiful due." Not long ago I returned for a time to the Mediterranean of my youth and found in France one of the most quietly beautiful little towns in the world. I hope to have given its lovely unpretentious forms the treatment they deserve.

My technique is primarily large-brush and deliberately fast. I gather my impressions slowly, through days of pencil or ink drawings. By the time I get to the point of working in oils I have a good idea of the subject. When painting landscapes I almost always paint outdoors. I like to work over previously painted canvasses: rejects, allowed to dry and then covered with a dark transparent brown. I work primarily in light tones, leaving the darks in place as much as possible, rather like a pastel painter.

I started drawing when still a toddler, took up painting in oils a few years later, ten years ago I began working in clay and plaster, and recently I've been doing abstract watercolours — which is to say that for me making art is more or less equivalent to being alive. But I don't talk about it, much. I'm a lefty, and get involved, but my work doesn't comment on politics, either. Art is a refuge from words.

I've shown my work in the US and in France, and I've published botanical and other illustrations.