'My purest and most perfect art experiences come from abstract painting. Abstract painting is about self-contained relationships of colour, shape, texture, hue, tone, angle, weight, surface, etc. within the painting. It is not about an external subject. The painting itself is the subject of the painting.

Well almost! In fact there are always external influences in a painting. Gravity, horizon and the human scale influence the way we see things, and feel about the weight and meaning of shape and tone and relative areas of colour. Even the edge of the painting influences the internal relationships. However, within these constraints, there is a joy in the freedom of painting without a conscious pre-conceived external subject. I like painting abstracts more than anything else. They are harder to get right. They reward the painter for hours of mental pain by suddenly becoming entities that must not be changed. Then the painting is finished'