What is it that inspired you to use found objects in your artwork?I didn't even realise that it was a genre, but objects have always appealed to me. I think it stems from collecting as a kid; collecting matchboxes, and army buttons and storing them, putting them in boxes, counting them, looking at them and rearranging them. However, I don't just use found objects in my work, it is found materials. It could be found slivers of wood with a worn patina. It is a visual thing, not necessarily an object. It can be, but not exclusively.Were you the kind of kid that always walked with your head down looking for things on the ground?I still do. I love to look on the beach after a hurricane. I found the long flat piece of wood in ‘Untitled 2010' after a hurricane. I also found some lovely black Welsh coal that washed up on the beach. It had been on one of the wharves to be used by ships, maybe.You're obviously a world-class artist. How do you manage to do that here in Bermuda?Everything is here that I need. In some ways, things are easier in Bermuda. I'm not a great believer in reaching [out to] other artists and being in an artist community. I think most artists tend to be loners. Being in New York or Paris you might find lots of same-minded people, but I don't think it would make any difference to me.Was your family happy when you decided you would become an artist?No, they tried desperately to dissuade me. I had to lie. When I was at school, I would go to evening classes at the local art school. My father was a civil engineer. I persuaded my father to let me leave school to go to art school. He made me promise that I would also go to school and do my A-levels at the same time. I never did.Did they ever have a moment when they realised how successful you became?I had an interview at H A & E Smith's in their London office when I was 23. My father and I both had to go to London. I went to the interview. I thought it would be something that would involve a short list and then another list. Henry Vesey interviewed me.He asked me to come back at 3 and offered me the job. When I came out my father said ‘how did you get on?' I said I got the job. He said why would anyone want to take a window dresser 3,000 miles? It blew his standards. They actually brought me out not once but twice. I left and went back to England at one point, and then they brought me back again. I have been here ever since.A lot of your pieces, such as ‘Portable Memorial, 2010' and' Home for Heroes 2' (2010), are about war. Why the interest in war?It goes back to my childhood. I was born in Wallasey near Liverpool in 1946. There was a time when I was about eight or nine years old. I was watching television. A BBC documentary came on that was about the evacuation at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. I saw these pictures and I was so gut-wrenched by it that I was traumatised. My father explained what had happened. I was scared to watch television for a while. I just couldn't understand how human beings could do that. Later on I learned more about it. My mother reassured me that this will never happen again. Of course, we now know that wasn't true.Also, my grandfather, Frank Collieson, was killed in 1917 during the First World War. He was 40 when he was called up. My father would tell me how streets and streets in one town would have kids with no fathers because the entire regiment was killed. And this was supposed to be when England was at its greatest. Well greatest at doing what? ‘Portable Memorial, 2010', is about the insincerity of Remembrance Day.A lot of your pieces, such as ‘Flag' and ‘Room with a View', have stars in them.They do and there are quite a lot of years between the different pieces with stars. I didn't realise that was a recurrent theme myself until this exhibition. There are also a lot of numbers such as five, four and seven. I like them purely for their shape.Did it surprise you, that 15 years later you were still thinking along the same lines?I find it reassuring. The scary thing would be if I thought they were better in the past than they are now. But I don't really see a better or worse. It is becoming explainable to me, which is all I really want.Your pieces have a lot of text in them also, almost like type. I think that is why people sometimes think there is a code in your work.I just find it appeals and adds something to the piece. I think people are always looking for the code in everything. Everybody wants a reason for things. They are just asking why, why? There is not this existentialism where you can just say you are who you are and do what you do. Everything is explained these days. We need to know the reason, and we want to know it now. I think it is good that people can make their own understanding of things.For more information visit www.bermudanationalgallery.com