Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to express the relationship of man to nature. That is why I think that I found the pattern in the islands, the simple island people living in some sort of crude harmony with nature, so exciting and fascinating. This relationship is deeper than just a decorative pattern of people walking in tropical foliage, it’s something which I have always felt myself. I’ve always been interested in the study of nature, from the smallest facets of insects up to birds and animals and plants, not in a scientific way but in a practical way, in a sense of wonderment; the beauty and the sort of mystery about them is very important to me. In fact, this feeling of wonder, to be able to sort of see these things with some sort of fresh vision, is the thing that I find most important to keep.
The relationship of the man to his environment is quite a problem pictorially because although I want to paint man in relation to nature, I also want to paint good paintings, that is, paintings that have the values of paint and colour and shape and so on. So all the facets of a good painting – design, texture, and all the values and so on – I try and I hope that I can weld them into this one simple expression of man in some form of dignified harmony with the natural world around him.
