“For my work I scavenge images from everyday graphic sources; I have a big collection of pizza and cereal boxes. The boxes sit around the studio and I like the idea of importing their imagery to my canvases and re-exporting them in painting space. The bird figure in Nutrition Highlights is taken from Toucan Sam, the mascot for Froot Loops. I alter the images to make them my own by stretching, reconfiguring, and reinvesting in them. All my work has a strong relationship to metaphysical painting. I’m interested in artists such as De Chirico. De Chirico title phrases like ’The Mystery and Melancholy of…’ are highly suggestive; I search for metaphysical tones in my source material – an alternate title for this painting might have been ’The Enigma Of A Toucan’. My work uses things which are everyday, but also have a sort of joie-de-vivre. I tend to work in a state where rarefied art and commercial vernacular are confused. I like the idea of pitching something into the painting to give it a new life or buoyancy.”