Drawing for me is the first port of call for the expression of an idea. I use it in two ways, the roughest setting out and examination of an idea or as a finished work worthy of exhibition.

I tend to make drawings on a theme in batches. Cutting a small pile of paper to size and sitting for one or more days running through ideas. The drawings therefore can become a series.

I draw either in pencil or more than often in ink, brush and wash, using a sharpened stick as a pen. This – drawing with a stick – sounds rather crude and accident prone, but I like the unpredictability of the mark as it is being made. The sudden ending of a line or the pooling of the ink, provides a life and feeling of immediacy to the image which adds a dynamic to the finished drawing.