During the mid-1980s I lived in a large metropolitan city near the sea. Returning home from dinner with family and friends, I would often find myself driving under big city lights along the promenade facing the sea .

One weekend I took a holiday at a nearby hillside resort that looked down on a river snaking through flooded rice fields and glinting in the sunlight.

Back from my holiday, I created paper mosaics that attempted to capture the mood evoked by these two sharply contrasting vistas.

A paper mosaic is composed of hundreds of paper snips individually glued down on a large expanse of stiff paper. Smaller snippets can be layered on top of larger ones to create depth. Not covering the canvas with paper creates negative space that can just as powerful.