Super 'Model' Photograph

My work today is about simplicity in its own order, it is about the importance of security and my own environment today in my life. The narrative I am creating is a true fundamental picture but not in the "˜Trompe l'oeil' style of painting. Just like a landscape, figures are not always included as they would be of no importance to the idea or if the painting is about a person then the face would be of no importance. Historically my subject has come from the political, the humanizing, artful, sceptical even the poetic, all ideas important to me and my studies. Like a lot of artists I have gone on this journey with brushes and have taken stops at various places to see if I wanted to stay there for a while. I have spent time living overseas and using their different cultures and climates in the subjects at the time of painting this has given me a good "˜infrastructure' in my work at times. The medium I am working with today is mainly impastoed acrylic and this is applied with a pallet knife. I work mainly on large canvasses nowadays (for various reason one of them being M.S and the effect this painful intrusion has on my hands) I finish the paintings of by framing them in wood that I save from destruction. This wood can be from pallets or timber being removed from buildings to re-modernising or such like. The timber is generally left in it's state that I retrieve it in. This I feel like I stated earlier in my statement is because I am not painting the "˜Trompe l'oeil' or real life style. I am intergrating the wood frames with the painting to complete the work. I do have artists that have been inspirational to me one of them in particular when I was a child was one of the great French Impressionist painters and sculptor, "˜Edgar Degas' although at such a young age I had no idea of who it was. There was a print in the Oxfam store that was on their wall for as long as I can remember. Eventually it became mine and the love for art was born at a young age. (please do not ask age :-) Although the paintings here today are large, I would love eventually to do a much larger size (just to impress myself).