This piece was painted in 1999, not long after my MFA in Barcelona, where we were encouraged to find our own unique visual language. I'd been studying artists like Fiona Rae and Callum Innes, and I realised that painting doesn't have to start from a subject at all. A visual language can be built entirely from process.

This piece uses chromatography techniques, specifically, Quink ink and a white spirit solution, plus acrylic and glue; poured onto canvas and left to bleed. It was a genuinely new way of working in the late 90s, discovered largely through experimentation.

I'm extremely proud of this one, it’s part of my history. There's a simplicity to its process and colour that I find calming, and I hope it carries some of that same sense of wonder and curiosity for you that it did for me in the making all those years ago.