have lived in some pretty extraordinary places, and so sometimes I paint them, as a memory, or souvenir. Artistically the challenge is to fill the painting of the room with "space" and even the "vibration" of those living and breathing within that space.
I am a born decorator, and have had indescribable pleasure during my life, collecting all sorts of things from jewellery to costumes, from brass objects to shells on the beach. In Bali, where I lived for 5 years, I went out "collecting" every day and never got bored by it. My wife Marian once made me a collection of shells off the beaches of Bali that are certainly as precious to me as the marvellous collection I have of "ethnic" jewellery. Pretty well everything I have ever collected finds its way into some painting or other, and it is an exquisite pleasure to glance around a room noting all the various things in it that have been immortalised in a painting.
Having so many collections of things, and even paintings and drawings, it is of course far easier for me to decorate somewhere than it is for most people, who have to go out and buy their paintings. However, it is also a challenge not to make a room so cluttered with all these things as to be just OTT. How, for example, with so many things to house , could one create a room with hardly anything in it at all, which for me is almost a necessity, due to a combination of loving empty spaces and the need to meditate, I don�t know how, but somehow it seems to happen. And when a room reaches that point of "ooh, I love to be in this room," it is then that I love to paint it.
