Whilst out walking, I can't help picking up bits & pieces of evidence of where I've been. This 'stuff' is charged with my memories of where I found it, and comes complete with its own history - which I can only guess. My interest is roused because something about it somehow speaks to me about my own experience. It tells me a kind of story - which I hear in my own way. I like to put these treasured objects and materials together in frames or boxes, sometimes changed & adapted, with the addition of paint, and sometimes unaltered, where the context or juxtaposition itself does the work.

When I do this, it is painting with 'stuff' - invoking the history and character of the materials themselves, letting them tell their own stories which I have recognised because they speak to me of my own experience and vision. In my 'retelling' of these stories, the viewer of course hasn't my memories of where I found them, and looks out upon the world from within their own point of view, so it is up to them to hear these stories in their own way. (But that of course, is another story...)

In recent years, a digital camera has also become a kind of digital notebook, and I must have thousands of specimens in my collection. These in turn are fodder for the creative imagination.

My digital notebook can be found here:

www.harthead.com/Notebook/Digital_Notebook/Welcome.html