"Many years ago, I was commissioned by the Island Shangri-La Hotel in Hong Kong to create a series of paintings for their new French-inspired restaurant. To create these works, Joanna and I spent a summer in a charming cottage on the edge of a tiny hilltop village, surrounded by vineyards and gardens filled with sunflowers. It was the kind of place where you could easily imagine Vincent van Gogh returning from a day in the fields, easel and paints in hand. Instead, it was just me, but the experience is one we will never forget. I still have a photograph of Joanna on my desk, taken on that trip in the eighties. This new sunflower work evokes those memories and the beauty of a bygone era." - Simon Bull