“This subject and scene is one that artists of the past would have naturally taken on in all its various guises. Think of Durer’s etching of the Bath House, for instance, Ingres’ The Turkish Bath or of Degas’ bathing women. With Degas, he wanted to make drawings and later pastels and find attitudes that were uncontrived and unself-conscious. He approached the subject as if he was looking through a keyhole. There was no keyhole to hide behind or to use as a metaphor in this subject.

A few years back, I stumbled across Edward Burra’s painting of a Striptease joint in Harlem. Burra is an artist I have always liked and been intrigued by well before the RA schools. I wonder now if I had seen his painting decades ago and forgotten it, and whether it too had been yet another influence on me to tackle such a subject.”