“Most of my work is produced outdoors on other people’s land, but this conservatory in my back garden is where I paint all my still-lifes. It’s actually new: the old one rotted away so I had to have it rebuilt.”

© Eamonn McCabe

“I didn’t realise it was the most expensive county in England when I sold up in London and moved down here to Sussex. It was quite by accident. But I came down and I was totally seduced – the kingcups and sluice gates and the mill at Coultershaw. All those Constable-y things.”

© Eamonn McCabe

“I take a lot of pleasure from being shut in here with the radio on. Gwen John used the phrase “keeping the world away” – and that’s exactly what I like to do. My mother used to say I was the most selfish person she ever knew – and she was right in a way!”

© Eamonn McCabe

“Big still lifes take around a month – it’s like writing a novel, it has to be very carefully planned. I spend ages thinking about composition.”

© Eamonn McCabe

“I paint like Lucien Freud – completely literal. I have no imagination.”

© Eamonn McCabe

“I do almost everything wrong twice, but I get it right third time. I take the mistakes down to the local tip – but it’s embarrassing to see them face up in a dumpster so I have to saw them up before I take them down. It’s a lovely feeling of relief! Apart from all the expensive paint wasted…”

© Eamonn McCabe

“This is the garden in West Dean, just a few miles from my house. It’s where I spend a lot of time painting. I discovered this place when I was driving past with my mum years ago and peaked in through the gates. It felt like the place I’d been looking for all my life. I like plants better than anything and finally I’d found art and plants together.”

© Eamonn McCabe

“It was derelict then, overgrown with convolvulus and buddleia. I did masses of work. But now it’s all been smartened up. There’s no dereliction left anymore. All the old barns are being converted – even since I moved here the countryside is disappearing.”

© Eamonn McCabe

“I see a plant that could provide a focal point, and I love that contrast with the regularity of architecture.”

© Eamonn McCabe

“I like the regularity of the gardens here, but I also work a lot at other locations nearby, camping out on other people’s land. There’s an orchard down the road, with a ruined old henhouse. I like to camp out there – I love the scruffiness. Other people have what I want, and don’t have. My work is as much about vicariously acquiring what I would like around me as anything else. ”

© Eamonn McCabe

“I bring a thermos and I just live in here for a month. This is a perfect light and I love the sight of all these terracotta pots. Sometimes I could just stand in here for hours. What I’d really like is to have a nursery with rare plants, like these staghorn ferns. I’m a great one just for pottering around.”

© Eamonn McCabe

“I still don’t think of myself as an artist. I always wanted to be a naturalist. I just wanted to be outside and I imagined it as a life spent swanning about collecting frogspawn. If only…”

Oil. © Olwyn Bowey.

Oil. © Olwyn Bowey.

Oil.

Oil. 90 x 94 cm.