Too many artists try to say something with painting rather than saying something about it.

A painter should question the use of his or her materials and find the inherent qualities of those materials, and then make their art out of those qualities. There are enough problems to deal with here than to brush over them in a hurry to say something about the world. This merely creates visual baggage fuelling literary forums and helping middle classes have points of conversation. The facts about painting are quite mundane . Talk to a painter who knows this however and the conversation is not mundane because there is no need for artifice, no need for any form of posturing - in fact it is a breath of fresh air.

We are informed that the world is more visual now; granted it is full of images but we are not living in a more visual time - quite the opposite in fact, as we are becoming more and more desensitised to the visual. The surfaces of these images are in themselves banal, ink on a glossy surface or images in a glass screen. It is an age of Graphic Design. We have more graphic designers than ever before (consequently more bad designers too). Furthermore computer programmes make design slightly more democratic - everyone can be a designer - unfortunately everyone also thinks they can. We need to protect out professions more (the word Engineer is a case in point). Maybe its the aspirational residue of the class system - wanting to sound more important than you think you are. Everything gets dressed up, over packaged, we are living in an age of auditions - packaging ourselves to be assessed for celebrity. Information and how it is presented has become a social currency

It is worth remembering that Graphics is the 'visual communication of information'.

Painting should not trade in information, this undermines or even smothers its true qualities.

It's not the what it's the how that counts.