I grew up playing in ruins of abandoned Victorian cotton mills on the banks of the canal, and grimy tiled shopping precinct spiral stairwells, and running my hands along the pebble-dashed walls of council estates, and the smell of burning plastic from vandalised warehouses on the edge of town.

In my paintings I attempt to capture the fading post-war remains of these northern towns and cities, the soul of their modern ruins which emanate through the old buildings and walls that still quietly and defiantly stand on the precipice of regeneration. I hope by painting these places it gives them a kind of dignified end-of-life before their fate turns them to rubble and then inevitably to apartments or fulfilment centres.