Titling this series of paintings Out to Lunch (after the 1964 Eric Dolphy album) reflects my attempts at a sort of parallel in structure and effect — timing, syncopation and phasing creating harmony and counterpoint; complexity and simplicity; subtlety and straightforwardness.

I see the works as being both cynical and optimistic — as if created by an inept machine, the individuality of mark removed, scrubbed of lyricism or flourish; and yet an expressiveness and honesty being born of this.

I’d been exploring ideas and making drawings with rhythmic quality and repetition for years before returning to painting — a reflection, I think, of a world where mass-produced, machine-made environments create the aesthetic fabric of our lives.

As humans, we’re recognition machines, biologically hard-wired to perceive patterns and find meaning in them. Perversely, there’s a point where we derive pleasure in challenges to this ability. We discern something, then realise it’s not quite what we thought — an unexpected complexity: it engages us and creates a frisson.

Throughout this series of pieces, I’m constantly trying, in differing ways, to find this point of challenge.