A parked van at night, a swan reflected on a lake, a severed fish head lying on a beach at low tide, a dog jumping for a Frisbee during a thunderstorm, a remote-controlled plane ditched into a bush, just out of reach.

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I never seek out moments like these, but I know them when I see them, because they stop me in my tracks. The best way I can describe it is finding something surreal within the real. I’ve always loved the craziness of Surrealism, but I can’t help being much more interested in the strangeness of outward experiences, rather than looking inward towards the subconscious. A lot of this is down to my obsession with light and the way it transforms things. Changing light changes everything.

The first time I found a moment like this I was in the shadow of Ben Nevis, walking in heavy winter rain along the bank of a canal in the Scottish Highlands. It was 2016, the year that two massive storms hit within three days (Storm Barbara and Storm Conor) and everyone but my parents, my brother and I had been smart enough to find shelter before the first storm arrived. We were all hurrying towards the nearest warm building, wrapped in bright blue paper-thin rain ponchos. As we did I noticed something to my right. Moored along the bank was a small boat, wrapped in tarpaulin (much like we were) to protect it from the elements and lit from behind by the cold light of the water. It looked like a huge chrysalis, and I stopped to take a picture with my phone. I only managed to get one photo before the wind froze the battery and it died.

I like to think that what happens after the photograph, the material process, is a kind of distillation. It varies depending on what quality I’m looking to amplify. I paint large scale canvases with acrylics, small coloured pencil drawings, ink washes and other media, but whatever it is I work very quickly, and heavily layer the surface. I’m so curious about material behaviour and love seeing layers build up, making the physical labour visible. That’s why I need to use stuff that dries quickly, so I can paint over things and make split second decisions without waiting. I hate oils.

I don’t worry about making it look real, but if it feels a kind of ‘real’ or convincing then I know I’m getting somewhere. In a strange way I can only really get there by letting things evolve away from the true image, into something else. That’s when the real fun begins.