'This painting is the sigh of relief in the series, it's all pleasure, no holds barred. I always feel like animals reflect us in a most uncomfortable way, showing up our pretensions, and therefore it's ever so slightly ridiculous, of course. The title in my mind as I worked on it was 'A Meeting of the Animals'. It's got a children's book feel. But it's also a thousand paintings that have gone before, of fields and light and woods, the pastoral dream, the countryside as paradise, the lush grass, the enclosing hills, the interesting tree covered in bright green moss. I really have no shame left. I wonder if there is a place for such paintings. 

I like the idea of art as a proverb, because a proverb delivers with ease. It's immediate and eternal, it's amusing, it makes you look at yourself with a laugh of embarrassed recognition. A sermon may also deliver, but you may have to try hard to get something from it, and master your own boredom and the pain of sitting on that hard pew, unless the priest is a gifted raconteur and philosopher. I am trying hard not to produce sermons, though I often feel I just end up with nothing at all. That's the risk one must take.'