I am an artist from London, England, and have been a resident artist for the last four years at the studios of the Schröder Foundation in The Hague. During my stay here I have been able to freely explore and develop my work in a number of different directions, creating unique works, most notably in the latter years: the 'Tower of Babel', The Hand-painted Holograph, and the bacteria-works. (see folio)

Great influences on me have been the ideas of surrealism, philosophy and science - the latter playing an increasing role in my late work. In terms of people, I would cite :'the celebrated British philosophers David Hume and Alfred North Whitehead and the artists Dali, Raphael and Da Vinci.

I have a great passion for experimentation and use a great variety of materials such as: oil paint, acrylic, pencil, ink, watercolour, chalk, wood, glass, vitrage, agar, and chemicals. These materials I have employed in paintings , drawings and objects.

Similarly, the techniques I have developed are also diverse: : old master glazing and drawing techniques; collage and photo-transfers; the exploitation of optical properties of various materials: automatism, accident and chance; frottage (Ernst) and the paranoiac critical method (Dali): the culturing of bacteria.

What motivates me is the quest for the beautiful idea, something similar to André Breton's conception of the marvellous, and perhaps Nietzche's category of the Apollonian.

Roy Amiss,July 1998