"When I punched a rib through my spine and broke my left wrist in 1996 I went from many years of working 50-60 hours a week to my new life of excruciating pain.
Some friends offered a newly painted room in their house and all the paint etc I needed to paint a mural. I told them I would do it for nothing if I had complete control over the time it took and the subject matter. They must have learnt to regret it as the resulting mural took over two and a half years and was one of the most pain soaked, nightmarish, and mentally demanding tasks I had ever taken on. It was also exactly what I needed at that time and they knew it. I got them to buy me 10 litres of white house paint, 5 litres of black, and half a coffee cup each of pure tint in red, blue, yellow, green, and ochre, and started the thing in a very stressed place mentally and physically with no pre-conceived idea at all of what or how I was going to paint (I’d never painted a mural before, or painted with house paint and pure tint).
I started with the sun and the mountains and lakes and then worked up into the sky. The rest just unfolded from there without planning ahead at all (same way I carved the cosmic guitar). It was very hard to use a paintbrush with a broken left wrist, so I ended up using my right hand, throwing it, flicking it off a toothbrush, pushing it around with my hands and fingers, and generally using any means I could to get paint on the walls. I used to work on it half the night and wake up on the floor in front of it next morning and start painting again.
The constant hurting when breathing or moving in any way nearly defeated me over and over again until my mind warped and I went to a place where I just didn’t care, which proved to be good training for the motorcycle drawings a few years later (see limited edition prints).
I never forget the massive learning trip painting this work was, it was my first swim across the sea of pain".
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