The simple act of drawing with pen or pencil punctuates the surface, draws tension into it. The picture plane is an idea drawn into being in the process of picture making. The picture plane is perhaps the most ubiquitous and tangible evidence of 'surface' at its most abstract or virtual. The surface on which the drawing is made is strictly two-dimensional but within its boundary is the strangest uncharted region which, prior to the drawing, is not so much unmarked as empty. Drawing a line, and paying attention to it once drawn, are ways of meditating on line itself but also on the nature of surface. Drawing a line is a means of describing, imaging or picturing that arises from the need to have purchase on a realm we cannot see. Drawing is a way of revealing what is possible on a given surface and often the consequence is quite startling spatial illusion.

It is frequently remarked that drawings (my drawings anyway!) lack colour, few stop to consider that colour itself has limitations: line works in ways that colour cannot. For my purposes, colour simplifies: sometimes I resort to a kind of colour-coding to resolve ambiguities that can arise when working out the more complex drawings. From time to time, however, I exploit the qualities of paint (and colour) for its own sake, when the visual 'proposition' requires surface areas to be blocked out, for example.

I am also attracted to the extraordinary properties of glass as a material, which can be quite transparent or completely opaque. Etching is a process which allows for what appears to be the purest overlaying of one 'surface' on another. The resulting image can seem to be architecturally substantial, almost graphically two-dimensional, or like melting ice, depending on the quality of light and its source.