I am a very visual person and my ideas tend to come from what I see around me. In everyday life - flicking through papers, watching TV, walking around town - images, compositions and colours can trigger chain reactions, sparking ideas for future paintings. I am always finding torn out references from magazines or scraps of paper with notes and sketches made in moments of excitement and inspiration days or weeks ago, that serve as starting points for new work.

A great deal of inspiration comes from the development and evolution of my own work. I am on a constant learning curve with my painting, even in a disastrous piece I can usually find something - whether a colour scheme, method of mark making and paint manipulation or composition - that worked well and can be taken on and developed in a new work. It is an exciting and evolving process that keeps me fresh, inspired and coming back for more.

Neil Dawson