The West of Ireland runs through nearly everything I paint. My family and I lived on Achill Island for ten years — we brought our children through primary school there. Over that time, the landscape and its light and colours just seeped into me, like osmosis. My process reflects that. A landscape piece might start with something catching my eye on a car journey or a walk in the west. I might take some sketches or photographs but if the image stays with me then I will work on the painting from memory. I never look for detail, but instead focus on the structure or composition and build  the painting from that. The colours reveal themselves,  I have been using the same colour palette for the past 20 years and I think of them as the words I need to describe the landscapes of the West of Ireland that I paint.

My figurative pieces can be more inward looking, a way to express more personal feelings I may have at the time. They started as a way of including my own family in the landscapes I was painting, so a lot of them will feature family units and groups. Where the landscapes look outward, these look inward — they're how I work through whatever I'm feeling at the time.

I paint in oils, working on canvas with a single brush and palette knife. I focus on the colours and shapes in the landscape rather than the details. My houses and building have no windows or doors, instead focusing on texture and colours that bring energy and life to the canvas – like the red rooftops of my cottages. I am self taught and have found my own way to apply paint to the canvas and move it around with the palette knife. I think this has allowed me to evolve my own unique style.