In 1998 I started doing pencil drawings of people in the street where the speed of drawing meant abbreviation and distortion and figures appeared grotesque or were fused together into conglomerates. I liked this way passing Londoners became extra fragile or frightening and wanted to use these transformations in the studio. My first foray into this was the Mutilates, a name I invented to mean mutilation and mutation. These huge paintings of white, semi-translucent figures were shown in St Giles Cripplegate Church in the Barbican where they seemed like bodies in decay or resurrected spirits.
