We’ve heard that your simplified, pictogram-like figures are created by repeatedly tracing snapshots of passersby taken with a high-performance camera. When collecting motifs in the city, what do you consciously focus on while observing people? Do you have any personal rules for photographing them?

I was once early for school pickup and was watching the passing pedestrians through the car windscreen as if it was a river of flowing people and realised that right here was an endless supply of models, a massive catalogue of various possible striding humans making an ever changing composition. 

I usually install my camera on a traffic island, often near my studio and record the lunchtime pedestrians crossing at the lights. I will never know who they are as with most passing humans. They are strangers known by a shape, a walk, a colour only. Once installed I photograph, or sometimes film, everyone passing for as long as I can bear it. It’s only back in the studio that I start the long task of finding the few that I can draw.  There are simple rules for this and other people often do it for me especially in far away countries. 

You have paid attention to the distinction between "looking at someone" and "being looked at." Do you see this dynamic of gaze as connected to human relationships in urban or social contexts?

I think that rather I was talking about the difference between an image of someone passing by, oblivious to you as an observer and an image of someone looking back at you, someone who knows they are being observed, who may even be posing in response to that gaze. It’s a world of difference and has a powerful effect on how one feels looking at that artwork. A picture is a kind of stand-in for what is pictured, it gives you some of the same feelings as when you are in front of the real thing. Perhaps sometimes more and in a more focused and timeless way. Standing close to a stranger who is looking at you is quite a confrontational and intense experience whereas watching someone walk past is a much calmer and more relaxed experience, leaving you to watch and admire. 

The figures in your work appear anonymous yet possess a striking sense of presence. Are you consciously balancing elements like individuality and collectivity, or anonymity and memory?

I am trying to make a good drawing of what I see, well really any drawing at all. This is not an easy task and requires all my concentration and toolkit of skills and learnt tricks. Almost every drawing is a failure until at last I just manage to pull it off (or occasionally give up). As I set about a new project, people walking on a nearby shopping street or people invited into my studio to walk on a jogging machine or perhaps dancers or professional sprinters, I push the first drawings around this way and that, trying to find the right way to draw, the right level of detail and colour. Again it’s not really a choice but rather what’s possible at that point. It could be a reaction against the last group I drew going from highly simplified to much more detailed, or might be in response to the type of movement I am trying to deal with.  

Your work seems to carry recurring themes of “movement” and “the passage of time.” What do “travel” and “mobility” mean to you personally?

I am trying to describe the world as I experience it and this is most clear to me when I am moving through space. To understand an object we turn it in our hands and so with the world around us. I see it as I interact and pass through space. 

We exist within space and are not separate from it as distant observers, in fact our sense of self is created by the shifting of surrounding space using sight and sound and balance and touch to navigate. 

 From the beginning I have tried to capture this sense of shifting movement in order to capture reality. Even at art school in the life class I would restlessly shift from position to position to draw the naked figure from every angle. I even made animation films of the process. 

Recent technologies have allowed me to make and exhibit actual moving images where artists of the past could only imply that movement. Of course even animated images are only really implied movement, as a series of still images is interpreted by our brains as fluid movement. 

Many of your works depict people walking and urban landscapes. Why do you think we are so drawn to the act of walking?

Looking back I have certainly drawn a lot of walking people. Hundreds I guess. It is the most natural and commonly seen form of human movement and also this upright stride is one of the things that makes us different from other animals (except birds, that I also draw). An individual’s gait is particular and as revealing as their handwriting or voice. Like ancient Greek or Egyptian striding statues the human body makes sense while walking and has a grace and sense of dynamic purpose. I first used the image of a side-on walking figure because I wanted to make a moving, walking statue. I filmed a friend on a walking machine at the local gym, broke the film down into single frames and chose a section that provided a double stride that could be looped to create an endless walk. Since then I have experimented with dance, running, crawling and viewing the walker from different angles, but I come back to the simple image of someone walking past you, a stranger who is unaware of you and will soon be gone but can be noticed and studied as they go.

Your work feels musical in terms of lines, surfaces, rhythm, and composition. Are there moments you intentionally incorporate musical structures, or times when you feel your work is musical?

My wife is a musician and I can certainly see that by comparison I am not at all “musical” but I appreciate music and what it can do in terms of locating your sense of presence and evoking mood and remembered experience. A picture without sound is mute and somewhat unnatural. I have often used sounds and music to fill this gap and find an extra layer of realism. 

With the rise of video, LED, and AR technologies in art, are there any new techniques or formats you would like to explore in the future?

I am constantly looking at forms of drawing and communicating ancient and modern. Once I locate a useful visual language or image-making technology it sticks in my head and awaits the right project and moment to be used. It could be an ancient mosaic on a floor in Rome or a computer game accessed through VR goggles. Humans have always played with decorating and drawing from carved rocks to pottery, painted wood to printed paper, coloured beads to LEDs. I’m always mimicking and referencing, looking for the right mood and format for what I’m drawing. 

Art critic Akira Horimoto once called you “the Hokusai of the West.” How did you first encounter ukiyo-e? Were there any particular artists or works that captivated you?

Well I never heard that and it’s an odd comment. I have some Hokusai “Learn to Draw” manuals that are wonderful collections of drawings of anything you might use in an artwork. Bridges and kitchen utensils, cats and trees. However I’m not a big fan, he is generally too fantastical for me. My attention has always led me back to Hiroshige who died in a flu epidemic 100 years before I was born. I spend a lot of time looking at his amazing rich pictures particularly from the later part of his career. He uses space - and movement within that space - so masterfully. In terms of drawing people it is Utamaro that I am always captivated by, his taut lines and striking compositions which I have both copied and learnt from. Haronobu is also wonderful, making stories within his pictures, creating a gentle space to enter.   

As both a collector and curator of ukiyo-e, how do you feel these roles have influenced your own creative process?

Other people’s art is at the centre of what I do. Since childhood I have been excited and motivated by seeing art wherever I come across it. I grew up in Oxford where there are many great museums. Other people’s art energises me and makes me feel connected to the notion of making art. It teaches me how to go about making my own art and conversely what I do brings me to look at and engage in what other people have done. What I make consciously refers to existing art. We all read art through a rich mix of culture, in fact we see and understand the world through the filter of art and culture and language. 

Your works can be found in various parts of Japan—Shibuya, Setouchi/Takamatsu, and the Osaka Expo, for example. Have you drawn inspiration from Japanese cities or people?

I find inspiration wherever I go, in shopping malls and on motorways, in forests, in museums and simply in looking at other people. It probably depends as much on my mood as the place that I happen to be. I don’t get ideas in the studio but rather out in the world, often when a bit bored. Japan was the first Asian country that I visited and the visual language on the streets made a big impression on me, as did the ancient architecture and art. I have photographed the traffic signs and elevated highways in Tokyo as well as the flood of street signs and carved stone monuments, in particular the deep stone carved lettering in temples and cemeteries. 

Are there any individuals involved in traditional Japanese culture—such as kabuki actors, craftspeople, animators, or manga artists—whom you find intriguing or would like to meet?

Meeting famous people makes me nervous and I can’t imagine we would immediately fall into interesting conversation but I am a huge fan of Miyazaki, the writers Murakami and Matsumoto Seicho. I suppose you don’t mean visual artists. Generally I am happy to be an enthusiastic member of the audience.

With the rise of generative AI, how do you think the landscape of art and creativity is changing? Do you have any concerns or hopes regarding how it might affect your own practice?

I am working on an AI portrait generating machine that will allow me to make portraits of people during the time that they are visiting my exhibition. Mixing elements of security facial recognition and street portraiture I think this might be an intriguing way to interact with visitors to an exhibition.