The whole deluge of photographic imagery we are surrounded by has always kicked off new ideas for me. I think it started with the billboards I saw as I looked out of the back seat of my parents’ car. But it now extends to every part of our lives.

I often see some new quality in an image I haven’t recognised before, and it produces a cascading series of riffs and variations in my mind’s eye that is quite hard to keep up with. I barely get a chance to get a tiny fraction of those ideas written down, and a few of these scribbles end up as artworks.

Bringing an idea to its best complete state produces a real high. Quite a lot of what you do is just normal ordinary work. An idea has to be researched, drawn up, reworked and then made. At a certain point in the process, if it is going well you see the idea crystallise before your eyes. It starts to snap into focus. It is then a case of trying to finish the work and keep it at that heightened state you saw in your mind.

Obviously, the financial practicalities of running a studio cause the most continual challenges over the life of an artist. However, I think another important challenge is working out how to open up the conversation you are having with yourself for other people to see; realising those ideas into the best tangible form to convey the excitement you feel to others.

Copyright is important as it recognises the creative input of artists and also offers financial recompense for this. Copyright Agency then does the hard work of collecting and distributing it on behalf of artists.

This year I have had two large commissioned projects to complete. Although there was funding connected to the commissions, it was a tremendous boost to receive my royalty payment earlier in the year and have some funds available to progress those projects.

THIS CHANGED MY LIFE

Growing up in the 70s and 80s there was too much crazy good stuff going on to distinguish one thing from the next. One moment of inspiration propels you onto the next. The raw stream of culture drags you along the river. David Bowie, science fiction and theoretical physics have all in their time drawn me along a path, backing each other up and adding shades of enlightenment along the way.