Everyone paints at school, it's part of the curriculum. It was part of the curriculum at home too since both my parents were art teachers and my two brothers had been through art college. Every summer during the school holidays we used to go off round Europe visiting galleries, museums, churches, sights and ruins; you name it and I saw it. It was on one of these trips in the summer of 1976 when we saw an exhibition in Nüremburg about shoes. Paintings, sculptures, installations and photographs about shoes. I remember being impressed by a photo realist painting, I couldn't believe it was just paint; coloured mud. "I want to paint like that!" I declared. No disrespect to my father but when I was a child in the 1960’s and he was painting abstracts; black on black, red and green should not be seen; Reinhard, Burri, Tàpies etc., they did nothing for me, "Dad, what's that, what's it supposed to be?" However that photo realist painting of a pair of shoes was magic - I was inspired, and although it was not the first time I had put oil on canvas "Pumps" was my first serious attempt. Then, at 16 years of age, my heroes were those who painted details like Van Eijk and The Pre-Raphaelites. Never mind the Pollocks and Picassos.

It was quite a busy summer that year. On a camp site I met a Danish girl, Anna, she was wearing a bikini and I didn't know where to look - I was only 16 remember - so cunningly I took out my sketch pad and spent many hours drawing her. What a tremendous excuse for admiring the view!

Back home I did a drawing of my bedroom to show her where I lived. This drawing had a wide perspective but it wasn't distorted because the bend was hidden in the blank part of the paper which represented the door. By accident I had stretched perspective and got away with it. This drawing was the basis, the starting point, for all my multi-view point perspective paintings which I have done ever since.