Hugh works mainly in oils and mostly in his studio at the moment. His source material ranges from drawings and paintings directy worked in the landscape, to photographs of strange details, textures, movement, effects of light and colour. He surrounds himself with these and piles of drift and rusted objects scavenged and dragged in. The boxes on display in his studio are like pages of a three dimensional sketch-book with ever changing arrangements of these objects. Ideas, stories and half remembered references are filtered through notebooks and the best bits appear in the studio as scattered white rectangles, acting as metaphors and keys into the stories and myths of the landscape. Hugh works on a multitude of paintings of various sizes at the same time. These can live for years in his studio before being brought to a conclusion. It is rare for him to start from a definite design in a drawing and aim to complete the piece on one to three days. It is more likely that the piece will remain fluid, ready to be sparked and its course changed by some fleeting moment, a new awareness grasped from the stuff around him, caught in a new light and relationship. This often happens many times to a piece, creating a multi-layered painting. Often, especially working towards a particular show, a series of these works come together at the same time, helping each other and suggesting themselves in surprising ways. At best Hugh hopes to create a mysterious object that is made up of the synthesis of his experiences and emotions; the colours, form and movement of the landscape; and the natural and human drama that continually changes and reshapes it. Increasingly these paintings have focused on the coastline, especially the flat tidal landscape of the East Coast, constantly under threat from the sea and man himself.