Attention to detail, repetition and caricature were key features in a series of paintings produced during the late 1970s and the 1980s, where I sought to use painting techniques to allow the suggestion and evolution of imagery. These works, which have the appearance of comic and ambiguous jigsaw puzzles, evolved into a series of crowd paintings as the references to characters and features became less obscure. They retain a strongly illustrative style, employing ambiguity and exaggeration and, in their intensity, can create discomfort as well as attraction. During this period of work, I was aware that, although all the faces and figures are drawn and painted from imagination, I was using my experience of drawing from observation. The relationship between observation, memory and imagination is fascinating and crucial to my work.

The characters in the paintings present unflattering portraits, using distortion and retaining a primitive quality that can call to mind the work of Breughel and Stanley Spencer. There is a recognisability or familiarity in some of the characters, which can attract viewers. These paintings caused me to question my own view of people, and to acknowledge that the view is both unflattering and populist. These paintings are, in many ways, the most accessible works and, because of their attention to detail and the familiarity of features, they attract interest from people often alienated by ‘high art’.