A clear memory out of the void of early childhood of making dolls out of hollyhocks: turn the flower upside down, nip off the base and insert a bud on a short stem into the hole you have created and, voila, you have a green lady in a beautiful pastel gown; a sort of Victorian amusement. I was enchanted. Another memory, when I was about seven. If it had rained, I would head to the furthest corner of the schoolyard and busy myself shaping small bowls out of mud. Later in the day I would dash back to the now dry bowls and fill them with hundreds of bright green buds which I stripped off the nearby weeds. I can see the bowls now, arranged in a row, filled with green, like tiny peas. I thought they were beautiful. I can remember my joy in this solitary pleasure: the beginning of a life­long love of creating.

I recently found an old black and white photo of hollyhocks growing by a shed. I printed this simple image, using silkscreen, over and over again, and slightly off register, until the image became a blur of movement and colour. These prints, with elements of the abstract, led to a series of hollyhock paintings.

I have always been drawn to J.E.H. MacDonald’s paintings of tangled gardens because of their energy. I think that my paintings carry that spirit forward. The life force is always there to be captured.

I do not attempt to categorize my work as being either “representational” or “abstract” but would claim instead that it is “painterly”. It has also at all times been inspired by the beauty of nature as shaped by the human love of it.