Memory.

My love of words stems from my school days and many inspirational, informal English classes where poems and prose were deconstructed, analysed and re-understood.

That inspiration took me down many wonderful roads and I found, quite naturally, that from the ensuing torrent certain fragments stuck and became embedded in my memory. This continues to be the case.

As in my watercolours and etchings, there is no definable plan. It may be an instinctive search for clarity and image – something profoundly simple, produced, hopefully, with precision.

In these attributes etching, watercolour and poetry have much in common.

W. H. Auden sums it up beautifully:

                             …to give a stunning

display of concinnity and elegance

is the least we can do, and its dominant

mood should be that of a Carnival.

or Allen Ginsburg:

A naked lunch is natural to us

We eat reality sandwiches.

But allegories are so much lettuce.

Don’t hide the madness.

Norman Ackroyd