The animal form has been the source of my work for as long as I can remember. The dog, up until now, in particular has been the object of my study for a considerable time. Breeds, coat markings, colour and character have all in turn stimulated my treatment of them to varying degrees of portrayal, from the simple portrait to more ambiguous compositions involving other elements

For a relatively shorter period I have become equally obsessed with collector type vehicles, which began on a trip to Berlin where I first encountered the Trabant car. The attraction for me lay in the bizarre customization that this particular car appeared to draw. The first Trabant I came across was covered in sticky back plastic that imitated red brickwork, complete with hand painted drivers door in the style of the front door of a domestic house and the bonnet and roof were covered in sticky back plastic imitating pine wood panelling. It was this car's entertainment value that led me to combine its image with one of three French bulldogs in a painting I entitled 'Safe as Houses' which alludes to the childrens story of the three little pigs. From that point on I continued to develop links between the animate and the inanimate and sometimes between two inanimate objects in order to render the visual pun more fully