The main attraction of chess was its potential for symbolism. After all, it is a game of archetypes. At first I arranged the pieces on the chessboard, but as the series developed, the pieces ventured off the board into other still-life situations. I have been amazed at how the most familiar objects can take on so much new, surprising meaning when these chess pieces are part of the scene.

At first I thought that graphite would be the perfect medium for this series - doing chess scenes in black and white seemed very fitting.  But as I worked I discovered that sometimes a drawing needed to be in colour.  There was no "reason" for this - I just felt that some pieces would work better in colour, others in black and white. Sometimes the colours are symbolic themselves, other times I choose them simply because they work best artistically.