The images reflect two aspects of my life which are inextricably linked – my work as a lecturer in graphic design and a love of the Lake District, where I was born and brought up. Walking the hills is a passion and something I cherish a great deal. A particular fell, waterfall, the indigenous herdwick sheep, the dry stone walls, all have a fascination. It is during these walks that subjects are chosen and ideas conceived.

Plato wrote, 2400 years ago, that: ‘By beauty of shapes I do not mean, as most people would suppose, the beauty of living figures or of pictures, but, to make my point clear, I mean straight lines and circles, and shapes, plane or solid, made by lathe, ruler and square. These are not, like other things, beautiful relatively, but always and absolutely.’

The challenge I set myself is to produce an image which represents the subject chosen, using a restricted palette of simple geometric shapes, in two dimensions and flat colours. As well as dealing with issues of scale, balance and contrast, I explore the semantic qualities of the shapes, to illustrate the visual ideas. Although representational, the concepts must also work in purely visual terms. It is a kind of alchemy. The arrangement could be literal, for example ‘Skiddaw Sheepfolds’, six circular sheepfolds represented by six coloured circles, the colours reflecting the lichen, heather or the colour marking of sheep for identification. There is also a connection to the Celtic dialect used when counting sheep: yan, tyan, tethera, methera, pimp, sethera.