"How would you describe your artistic style?
My artistic style has in the past been referred to as ‘Black Classicism’, but I really consider my work to be more modernist, a ‘Painterly Realism’ where the process of making is never subsumed by the act of depicting.
What messages and themes do you try to communicate in your work? How has this evolved over the years?
By the mid 1980s I had already begun to broaden my approach to the notion of ‘the subject’ in my work. Heavily influenced by my time at Goldsmiths College, where the theme of personal history and identity, as impacted by the British post-colonial legacy was rigorously analysed, the discourse around the Images of the ‘Black Subject’ began to inform my art practice. This intensely analytical nature of the Goldsmiths course continued for some years to provide me with the foundations from which I have continued my exploration of the ‘Black Subject’ predominantly through the medium of painting."