I never set out to make paintings of tower-blocks. It was not a pre-planned intention. It was a gradual development, from my time living in East London.
I had been working from small still-life set-ups in my studio, and had positioned some objects on the window sill.
Whilst concentrating on the window frame I became more interested in the shapes and colours I could see outside the window. This took me outside the studio, and into the landscape.
Tower blocks as homes for thousands of people hold a strong narrative, but I never wanted to be drawn into this social comment. It was merely the shapes, form and colours that spoke to me.
I was excited by the simple squares, rectangles, often painted with with contrasting colours, rising into the sky against a backdrop of old and new architecture in East London.
The Tower Blocks provided a simple subject, that could be reduced down to shapes, and colours. In turn these concepts could be brought back, through the course of a painting, to something representing powerful figuration. These ideas have remained with me throughout my painting to date.