Darkness is often where we most feel a closeness to liminal spaces. To the places that beguile us with their unfamiliar, peculiar grace. Those places where we move from our imaginations and myths into culture or society and back again. I search for those places in my paintings, which become a type of tribute or love song to desert places that resonate with this complex mysterious quality which inspires a type of dreaming. My paintings are very much about telling stories which originate from my own personal experiences. I have always spent a lot of time living alone in the wilderness. I seem to need my own solitary place in the natural world. It is a way to remove my ‘self’ so I can find my paintings. The wilderness is a place where artists traditionally go to find a way into complex aesthetic problems, explore and search for solutions. Even though paintings are creations of the imagination they can still produce real transformations and change. Unlike words, paintings (and music) are multidimensional, expansive, contributing to other imaginations, carrying ideas and substance below the surface. I hunt for darkness, just as I hunt for solitary, isolated, wilderness and desert places, for revelation.