“I do lots of drawing and work out my images as sketches, and work up to introducing colour. Then if it feels like it could be translated into a painting I’ll paint it. Saucepan With Spilled Sausages plays off the notion of portraiture. Somehow in painting one can be torn between contradictory images: the image is at once a saucepan and sausages but it is also a head. As a painter I try to put contradictory things together so my painting retains this paradox. The image flits between these two possible states. This work also has a slightly militaristic feel because of the colours. It looks something like a helmet, the handles are earflaps, and the sausages are in the shape of a mouth. I’m interested in perception: painting something you might catch in the corner of your eye where you might think ‘did that actually assume that shape?’”