From left: Aerial view of Fallings Road site 1952, works canteen c1954, my grandfather - Daniel Stanley - receiving a gift for 21years service at Guys

There are four photographs from the Guy Motors archive (and my own) that I keep returning to.  The canteen, above; the image on the right of female employees have sun lamp treatment; the memorial garden, and the photo of my grandfather.

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Initially, I’m collaging and painting almost-copies of them and looking closely as if to figure something out - trying to find out why these images are so compelling and what it is that keeps bringing me back.  Making Paintings of/from them helps me to see previously unnoticed details but I’m scared I’ll lose whatever it is that is so evocative to me – the thing that keeps me coming back.  I’m starting to conceive the painting process as archaeological, forensic; over and over I create small versions of the images – sometimes intentionally blurred, sometimes built up in thin washes, other times almost abstract; occasionally traced – intuitively concealing and revealing different parts to dig out meaning. Sometimes my paintings are as small as postcards. Gently (paint)brushing at parts of the image as if bringing the stuff of the archive – its people and things – into the present.