For 30 years my paintings were solely in watercolour. These decades were essentially my colour laboratory. There is a point though when the study must become its own entity. Going from small works on paper to large canvases was a decisive act in staging a deliberate occupation of the white wall. Space in itself, is a medium. The freedom of gesture is matched by the ability to smash the fourth wall in terms of colour and talk openly about the connections between apparently very different moments in the history of painting.

Anna Johnson