I enjoy taking risks – even if it means ruining a perfectly good piece! – just to see what happens next. I am confident in my approach and my mark making. I do not pin myself down to any one style, though I still pursue and develop technically coherent bodies of work. I mostly use a limited palette of turquoise, magenta and lemon yellow, using a mixture of palette knives and brushes. I sometimes focus on set ideas, and other times I start off with complete abstraction, building up an underpainting with random marks… letting it evolve, uncontrived. With this approach, and with turning the canvas round and round, the painting will eventually remind me of some experience, or something I have seen. Then I will either create or retrieve reference material from my archive, or paint from memory to bring out the shapes. Even though the painting here is an abstract, I see a picnic I shared with close friends on a rugged British coastline. That’s me body boarding!

I draw upon my deep knowledge of experimental film-making to bring fresh looking (yet well-tested) ideas to my commissioned short films. I make films for web, films for conferences, and also stop frame and vector animation. I create my visual palette from scratch, developing unique characters and graphics, working with actors to recreate realistic movements and filming around on location. Film-making is like a whole language for me, where I can communicate the desired look and feel clearly by layering up images, and commissioning original soundtracks.

I film and project all my own material when live video mixing (VJing) at festivals and events. I can personalise a show and also write and mix in my “stream of consciousness” poetry. When the music is good, the visuals just flow out.

I use Modul8 for VJing, Final Cut Pro X for editing and Moho Studio Pro for animating. I use a Canon 70D and Panasonic HS900 for shooting RAW and HD.

Laurie Anderson is my biggest artistic influence, the content of her art is so intimate and her multi media installations have moved me to tears in the past (even though I hate crying in public). I love Helen Chadwick’s art (RIP). She expressed her femininity in such unusual ways – like her flower arrangements of male genitalia – and she brought a lot of chocolate into galleries with her chocolate fountains. Cornelia Parker’s artwork is sheer poetry to my soul. The way she captures intense moments or thoughts about life, brings shivers just thinking about it! For example, the smell and feeling of her exploded chapel, with all the pieces of burnt wood suspended in mid air… or her framed A–Z, with a hole burnt right through the open pages of central London.