I painted the self-portrait from 1975 during the first year of my studies at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts (School of the Fine Arts Academy of Finland, as it was called back then). I guess I was somewhat inspired by Pop-Art (Warhol and Hockney) and the Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck. There was a lot of drawing from a life model and plaster casts at the academy in those days. Quite a contrast to what I had experienced in the British art schools.

The landscapes are from the Pre-Diploma Course in Art and Design at Manchester Polytechnic in 1972–73. They were painted during an excursion to the Lake District in North-Western England. I used dry pastels, which I had become accustomed to already as a teenager in Ulster.