Heads have become an obsession to me, in the search to create modern icons: whether flawed Heroes, outwardly noble and courageous but nevertheless a victim of sorts; or ambiguous Virgins, the symbol of perfection but also of female repression. Both of history and of now. This has developed alongside the idea of faces in a crowd – indistinguishable amongst all the others – each with their own private tensions and sadness.

In my treatment of the heads, I want to get away from realism, the over-wrought and the unnecessary (almost baroque) detail I see in a lot of work depicting the human figure or face – and concentrate on simplicity in form and inner emotion.

The heads are containers, not of the intellect, but of something spiritual, something secret, enigmatic and un-knowable.