Since a small child I’ve had a fascination for ancient Egypt but, despite many thwarted attempts to visit, I wasn’t able to until my late 30s.

So I created this image from the imagery I had access to and from an imagined ideal of what Egypt may have been like. The hieroglyphics are real but I’ve rearranged them together to suit the composition. And, like many of my paintings, I like to think that you are imagining something splendid and exciting happening just below.

I tend to specialise in augmenting my oil paintings with other media, especially curtains and corrugated materials, and in this case a plaster sphinx I found in a recycling store.

Oil on corrugated pvc with pigment panel
1,220 x 1,530mm

Theodosius is a more modest work with a similar feel.