Finally I settled on the symbolic serpent/snake skin that is shed at regular intervals, abandoned as having outlasted or outgrown its usefulness but yielding a rejuvenated newly- energized creature setting off with a gleaming, fresh image.

To portray the various layers of complexity and contradictions I collaged large pieces of rice paper onto the surfaces of the canvas, symbolic of the skin that lies buried, temporarily discarded but never entirely disappearing. For me, it seems an appropriate description of the old and new cultures, the eternal elements of quintessential China that lie beneath its new image. My painting surface presented me with a visual yin and yang, a tension that reflects the pressures of a country that is simultaneously burying much of its past as the damming of the Three Gorges proceeds, is excavating exciting new tombs in Xian and is making the highest-tech products for the world’s consumers - an endless rhythm that fuses past, present and future.