My fascination and engagement with Vans in caravan parks is about who/what is inside. I paint the external, but it is the internal I think about—the people who live there permanently whom I never include in my paintings.

Are they there by choice?

Are they happy or sad?

Was this van once part of a hope, a possibility, a dream… which, with the passing of time, was surrendered to life’s ordinary banal requirements and demands? Were they once going to take their young children on a year’s road trip… build a permanent house…work hard, save, move on to somewhere “better”?

Because now they are going nowhere. Vans up on bricks. Hemmed in.

Or… did someone make a deliberate and decisive choice to live a simpler and less materialistic life?

So when looking over the fences at these vans and their immediate surrounds, should we feel a sense of something lost, or instead, envy and applause.

Is it loss and resignation, or gain and celebration? I aim to convey both.

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I am fascinated by the external aesthetics of the scenes — the associated objects, many of which are ugly and mundane. Gas bottles, plastic chairs, clotheslines, tanks, door mats, extension cords, trailers, milk crates. Always seen past barriers – fences or hedges – closing everything in.

Mostly No exits.

The often bright colours which I use contradict the sometimes bleakness of the subject matter, throwing up more contradictions and questions…

pathos or joy? quirkiness or banality? laughter or despair?

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