When I was a kid my mum showed me a pop art book. Flat colour, no brush marks, nothing on the page to tell you how it got there. I couldn't work out how they'd done it. I'm still not over it.
I grew up in Kimpton, Hertfordshire. I work here now. The village has changed, London money, new houses, but that's woken something up rather than soured it.
I went to Camberwell College of the Arts in my early thirties. That meant leaving a job, spending money I didn't have, and committing to something I'd been circling for years. It was the right call. Took me a while to know that.
I learned screen printing for twenty years just to tear it all apart.
Twenty years of getting it right first. Registration, timing, the order the colours go down. Now I set myself restrictions and print against them for seven, ten, fourteen hours at a stretch, and some of those layers don't behave. If I get a colour wrong I work it out on the spot. That's not a bad day. That's the job.
My influences are Raymond Briggs and the grain in The Snowman. 1970s Swedish illustration. Airbrushed vinyl. Letraset. Old magazines I pick up at car boot fairs. Graphics made by hand, before everything got smooth. I like things that show you how they were made.
The work costs money. I pay for materials out of my own pocket and trade prints for carpentry and framing. That's just how it works.
I'll be making things at 80.
Buy a print and you're backing someone who isn't going anywhere.