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		My work draws on images from encyclopedias, history books and old health and fitness books that were around when I was a child. I used to pour over the images in these books as a boy, but never really learned anything. Nothing seemed to make sense. These books were meant to be used as reference books, at the beginning of each volume subjects are listed along with page number references of were to find the information. I didn't look up anything, instead I dipped into the books at random, so after 'Magic', the next subject would be 'Magnetism' and so on. It became a kind of surreal experience making up my own stories. The fitness books were even more puzzling to me as a child. The photographic style of the men posing in the fitness manuals related to a 'classic' or 'heroic' painting style from the 19th century. Ostensibly to illustrate the various fitness regimes, these men were actually the first to make money for posing for purely aesthetic reasons. They were the first 'male pins ups'. I felt attracted to these images as a boy, and felt as if there was a big secret that I was yet to learn. The work of the author William Burroughs has always interested me. In describing a technique called 'Cut-ups' in which text from different sources are spliced together, he talks about '...establishing new connections between images, and how one's range of vision consequently expands....whether great literature or the latest fanzine, ideas slip into your work and influence you....Cut-ups take over that invisible control and never fail to surprise'. It's ironic that my work draws on material from encyclopedias and 'books of knowledge' because my work is more about a lack of knowledge or not knowing about the way things work. It's about the world being a huge fascinating puzzle. It's about a world that doesn't exist. It's also about a secret world or about something exciting and unspoken. In my work I try to produce images that attempt to create a 'sense of wonder' about the world from a child's point of view. In combining these images I re-create feelings from my own childhood. Feelings that relate to being different, about an innocent sexuality, about identity and the perception of masculinity. These ideas are then combined with a curious or naive view of the world or about a secret or undiscovered land. I use the technique called 'cut-ups' as a starting point, or as an element in my work, together with images that should generate both feelings we can instinctively relate to, and feelings that are beyond our understanding. Like a surreal poem, these thought provoking images combine to create an strangely familiar landscape or an exotic and puzzling world seen through a young boy's eyes. I like to explore exciting new ways of combining contemporary painting, traditional printmaking along with the use of modern technology. I like to push my ideas forward into new areas, extend the boundaries, take chances and try to create something totally new.