During my Fine Art painting Degree Course, at Birmingham College of Art in the early 70s, the American Abstract Expressionists were my heroes. One of them, Ad Reinhardt said, ‘Art is art and everything else is everything else.’ More accessible is the remark by one of my lecturers, Roy Able, ‘You can’t paint like a cowboy if you live in Birmingham.’ In 1977 when exhibiting at the Richard Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh, Richard took me to a lecture by one of my heroes, Robert Motherwell. He was not the wild Expressionist painter I expected, but more of a philosopher. 

I used the expressionist style later to create a world based on the Western fictional genre popular in the 1950s to 60s. Mexicans were never the heroes of these films. Following visits to Mexico I  reimagined these narratives by painting the ‘sombreromen’ centre stage. Drawing has always been an integral part of my practice. I am often inspired by styles of other painters as in the 70s when I used the angst-driven spiritual techniques of Abstract Expressionism without the anxiety.