These pieces are from an ongoing series of works in acrylics on 115 x 75 cm canvasses. My primary influence with this series is from the old fortification plans of Maréchal Vauban (1633-1707), the famous French general and engineer who planned the defences of some one hundred ad sixty strategic towns and coastal sites in France, plus more in other countries. In all these artworks I have created a deliberately confusing interpretation of one of his basic ideas and turned his “impregnable fortress” design features into a "confusing set of angled walls and passages"… as in a maze without a safe and sure direction of progress. If Vauban's works were ever to be breached and destroyed they may have looked shattered, like these, from above... although that scenario rarely happened!

The initial planning of these designs starts with many pins placed around the edges of the framed canvas, after which cotton threads are stretched between the pins zig-zagging across the medium's surface at random. From these 'lines' I select prominent 'directions' and with masking tape plot out angular 'blocks' for colouring-in. Some canvasses have two or three overlapping layers of coloured blocks to build up a more complete design, and th epainting tech-niques vary between brush, sponge roller, and palette knife.