The guys in the sculpture department at my art college had it right. They always seemed to be playing around and experimenting. It always struck me that the painters didn't do that, that they stuck to using materials in a conventional way.
I did all the things you're not supposed to do - you aren't meant to put oil paint and water paint together, so that's immediately the first thing I did. Of course it was totally hopeless, but I felt that breaking these rules really opened something for me. As an artist I think that you should always question what you're told.
If you put paint on to a canvas with a brush, you know what it will do. But what if you use something else to apply the paint? It's going to do something different, perhaps something you never expected. I've put paint on in so many different ways - I've poured it on with watering cans, added it on with little pins, blown strands of it with fans, both large and small. Once, when my studio used to be on a film set, I hired an industrial wind machine and tried to use that. I watched in horror as my studio moved from one end to the other.
More recently I've been applying paint with a syringe, which is an incredibly precise instrument for controlling liquid. It has allowed me to concentrate on colour and the sequence of colours rather than focusing all my attention on the paint and how it flows.
Lots of different things inform my choice of colours. Sometimes it's purely intuitive, putting colours together and seeing how they look. At other times I might lift a palette from an old painting, or, as I recently did, from the opening sequence of The Simpsons.
I feel like I have discovered a language that I can now play around with. I never set out to create this style of work though. And that's the great thing about art - you're never too sure where you're going to end up. It really is a personal journey.