My work alternates between figurative themes and abstract landscapes, sometimes overlapping. In this album I'm displaying some recent figurative themes, involving current issues and ideas, along with some of my Turkish Baths paintings which first began when I lived in Cyprus. Some were made in Cyprus, many were made from memory and drawings after my return to the UK.

Some of these paintings are more concerned with conveying figures in various settings using abstraction and areas of colour while other paintings are more obviously figurative. Both ways of thinking about paint and colour feel relevant to me and my constant questioning around what painting can be.

Paintings of Women in the Turkish Baths were originally based on drawings and watercolours made in the Turkish Baths (Hamam) in Nicosia, Cyprus.

Womens' days in the Baths were Wednesdays and Fridays, and as I knew the owner of the Baths, I was allowed to go inside over a period of 5 years to draw and paint the women. I used pencil, or watercolours to study the women as they undressed in the patterned Resting Area, and afterwards as they had their massages, or reclined in the steamy Baths. The Baths was divided into 5 areas; one main area with a hexagonal stone slab, which massages were done on, and 4 smaller chambers. Each chamber had a domed roof, and looking upwards you could see tiny holes, filled with glass, which allowed shafts of light in. At times this became an element in my paintings.

The women were never bothered by my presence, and carried on with their ritual cleansing, and chatting. I found it challenging painting watercolours in the steamy chambers because water always dripped onto my paper, but sometimes I allowed this to become a part of the painting, and this informed my oil paintings as they developed.

Gradually my paintings evolved to represent my concerns with the ever changing daily problems of the women, which were discussed while cleaning and scrubbing their bodies, and also focused on ways to resolve the theme of figures within a setting. Conversations merge with the steam-laden passage of time, and I wanted to convey this sense of activity in the paintings.

The Baths convey a constant state of flux, from the daily relationships of the women, and the way light shimmers on the bodies, to the flickering bands of steam, and my own emotional state as I face the women. My use of particular poses expresses these interests, while the bands of coloured steam embody the flow of life, and the arches can be seen as doorways into other physical or mental places. It’s a world within a world.

My concerns with the Baths on a painterly level developed as I explored the theme. I started painting in a fairly literal way, but began to focus on shapes across shapes, colour painted or rubbed over colour, and sometimes the women became dabs of colour or marks.