The work I make owes an equal debt of gratitude to the traditions of history painting and pop art. Themes in the paintings are often derived from stories and myths I enjoyed as a child and instead of a straightforward approach, I reinterpret these stories using pictures appropriated from a wide range of sources. Images taken from advertising, cartoons and pornography are given equal weight with images drawn from the works of the old masters. Pictorial symbols in art used to be a language clearly read by the public, allegorical paintings had set codes of symbols used in order to communicate to an illiterate audience, now these same symbols can have a multitude of meanings depending on their context.
