The work I make owes a lot to both the traditions of history painting and my studies as a printmaker. Themes in the paintings are often derived from stories and myths I enjoyed as a child and instead of a straightforward approach, I reinterpret these stories using pictures appropriated from a wide range of sources. Images taken from advertising, cartoons and the media are given equal weight with images drawn from the works of the old masters. This is not meant to disrespect the works of previous artists but meant to show how these images can have the same power, importance and meaning. Pictorial symbols in art used to be a language clearly read by the public, allegorical paintings had set codes of symbols used in order to communicate to an illiterate audience, now these same symbols can have a multitude of meanings depending not only on their context but also on the means of their reproduction. Juxtaposing these images with each other creates a more nuanced depiction of a story that leaves much more open for interpretation by the viewer.