This ultimate artistic project – my life’s work – is the unexpected lovechild of fun, profundity, Paris… and a café long ago.

No, but seriously… I find people who can’t laugh at themselves seriously uninspiring. On the other hand, those who don’t wonder about “the deeper questions” may be missing out on much of what it means to be human in the first place. My subconscious brain was probably pondering this when it offered up the infinity² concept back in the early 2000s for my consideration. It got it.

A particularly perturbing picture… Each of my infinity² paintings is both an amusing – and intriguing – puzzle and a rich metaphor for life.

Your painting arrives disassembled, in a stack or a box. There’s no right way to put it together. Well, there is: your way! Indeed, for me, the painting is not finished until you, the acquirer, have completed the puzzle by putting it together in a way that pleases you. You finish what I started, playing with the same squares I played with, and in this way we are linked across time and space, although we may never meet in person.

Not as easy as it looks… At first you may think it will be child’s play to put together a square puzzle consisting of only nine pieces; I mean, how hard could that be? Well, for everyone I challenge to do just that, it is far harder than it seems, and can even end in some frustration before I reveal to them that this puzzle is unlike any other. It’s a magic puzzle-picture and it has no beginning and no end!

The magic is that every single side of every square can join up with another and the pattern or design will continue perfectly with no break or discontinuity. Try it with your clever friends and have fun watching them go nuts!

A metaphor for life… Each infinity² painting seems to be complete and not linked to anything else. But for me my paintings represent people and this is where it gets fun.

In the same way that we came from our parents and may ourselves give rise to children, my paintings have no beginning and no end. If you take the bottom row of three squares and place them at the top, or do the opposite, the painting will continue perfectly.

Similarly, if you take the left-hand column and move it over to the right, or vice versa, there is no break in the pattern. Everything is connected.

To look at it another way, you can place any of the nine squares in the middle of the picture and will always be able to build up a perfect image around it, like a jigsaw.

Create and recreate  yourself infinitely… Your life, like your painting, is yours to invent and reinvent as often as you like, every day if you wish. Your infinity² painting doesn’t even need to be square if you don’t want it to be, and neither does your life.

Use your painting as a reminder that even if it gets knocked over and the pieces get mixed up, you can always put it back together again, and often in new and unexpected ways. I hope you’ll enjoy playing with this as much as I enjoy making them. Have an infinitely rewarding life!