There's intense staring. Complete focus on what you see. Slowly the world around fades out, leaving the incremental changes in shade and light, unfolding deeper as the eye strains to see into the nooks and crannies of existence.

Then all at once the detailed and specific expands outwards, exploding the surface plane - a magic eye of the real; so that the enormity of the scene before you almost chokes understanding. Now perspective and perception knot together threatening to distract from the scene as you realise that the first mark has committed you to this; and now you have no choice but to see it through. 

Later I recreate this torrent through the movement of brush strokes - quick to search for new lines - to find the tangent to the line of the thing; through pen scribbles that ebb and flow through thick and thin, overlaying mark on mark - hatching and twitching in nervous fight; through the violence of scratch marks - seeking to delve beneath the surface, to score and underscore presence(s); and through the instinctive dot and jagged line of tip-ex - highlights meandering and double-thinking what and where the image is.

This is the first time I've sought to categorise anything like a process in my recent work. It sprang from instinct and serendipity - and, of course I now run the risk of reading too much into it - of creating my own mythology. Yet the process has its origins, and although they are physical - jerks and motions that stem from neurons and nerve endings, there is underneath a motive, a desire - the throbbing presence of Ego and Id.

If nothing else there is a clear sense of energy, a desire not to stand still - even when depicting buildings and monuments of definite 'There-ness'. 

So here, at the end I find what I'm trying to express is the sheer effort of the now. No wonder I'm knackered.