Painting is not something one does to make money or become famous (though both of those would be nice), but is something more fundamental, more urgent, as though one was delving into oneself to give meaning to a set of coloured marks, to make the painting work as an independent object, as a pictorial metaphor for one’s existence.

The distinction between non-figurative, or "abstract", painting and figuration is academic. All painting is abstract, is what you read from of dried viscous stuff on a flat surface, and it is impossible to make a mark on such a surface which doesn’t recall some component of the seen world. In my own case, things felt and remembered are more important than the accidents of a particular visual experience at a particular point in time.

I spent an important part of my childhood by the sea in North Wales, in a coastal environment subject to constant and often dramatic changes. Nature was never far distant. Memories of those years are central to my work practice and to this extent all my work is landscape-based. Memories of the past will not go away though at the beginning of each work I have no idea how it will progress. Chance is important but with luck, at some point the painting itself takes over, tells me what to do, and only then am I aware that the painted surface conveys something which feels right for me, something about a certain kind of outside light and space, the processes of nature.

The activity is neither prescriptive nor mechanical and involves the risk of abject failure. In the end a painting is beyond words and one paints best what one knows.

Cuillin Bantock has exhibited widely in the UK and elsewhere and his work is in a number of private and corporate collections. A full C.V. is available on request.