Painted in December 1999, Taboo is a work based on a poem by Christopher Pressler. I produced it in response to our first meeting and my intial impressions of his poetry. Taboo (the poem) is a Chris's exploration of gay civil rights, and a culmination of responses to his loathing of marches (from his childhood in Belfast). I used the poem and the painting to explore Chris's inner self and his responses to the subjects we had discussed.

The painting involves many different layers of paint, images are hidden beneath drips and smears and other images - text is blurred in and out of focus, some of it hidden - some of it obvious. The layering is something that I explored (without the text) in a kind of happiness. The layers of paint and images come from the fact that I see that people present alternative facets of themselves to different people in different situations: From my understanding of psychology we all do it to one extent or another in order to fit in with the groups of people who surround us.

My paintings of people tend to abstract them to relatively simple forms because it is only the essentials which need to be shown in a painting - too much detail detracts from the meaning of the overall piece - I would use the accuracy of photography or film if I wanted greater representational detail.