Death Shall Have no Dominion process...

This is not as morbid as it might seem. In Western art the skull often symbolised a memento mori, and was sometimes used as an aid to meditation by monks (especially the Franciscans and Jesuits). But in relation to my exhibition it represents something different- if you look at a human skull you cannot help but notice that it is smiling, a perpetual grin adorning naked bone. This for me is a message from Nature telling us that there is no fear in death, it is merely another stage in a process. The title of the painting is a slight deviation from the title of a famous Dylan Thomas poem. I don't always do this, but I applied an imprimatura (Burnt Sienna) to the white of the support to begin with. This took away the glare of the white, but also gave the painting a kind of warm glow showing through the subsequent layers of paint, particularly in the more prominent eye socket...