"I use the landscape as my raw material. I select from it. Nothing is altered or arranged. Chaos is tamed, made sense of through symbolic, metaphorical, and actual physical connections. For me it is not particularly important what it is I am photographing, more that something of how I am is present in the image. It is this that makes me eschew any form of trickery or manipulation through filters or digital retouching for example.

Themes and content are strongly influenced by the geography of Wales and Cornwall. I am inevitably influenced by the similarities between Cornwall and Wales my current home, and see my work reflecting a painterly rather than photographic view of the forms, textures and colours of the landscape.

Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, Terry Frost and the Abstract Expressionist painters, as well as British and American photographers, Ray Moore and Wynne Bullock, are major influences in my work and reflect form and human spirit in a landscape that shapes us as we shape it."

Lesley James, April 2003