I've been fascinated with surfaces and textures since I was a kid, camping every summer in the forest next to a sculpted sandstone beach on Thetis Island. That interest attained professional status when I started painting for the theatre in the late 1990s. I'm especially fond of the effects of age and wear on a surface - breakdown, distress and patina - to the point that at one point I was working on a visual encyclopedia of grunge. That project got shelved, but you can see the results of that passion in these designs.