Absolute Realism

‘The first glance at a Ross Watson painting is arresting. They're odd, beautiful and filled with ambiguity and hot men.’

Joel Perry, INSTINCT Magazine, U.S.A.

Gathering exciting images which I'd seen in foreign countries helped shape this series. A bit like trying to cook food very well, I combined four or five ingredients which are interesting together, trying to get the proportions just right. An obsession with aircraft coincided with this series, and I posed the first gold-medal-winning Olympic athlete I was to paint, Grant Hackett, before a sleek fighter jet on a deserted beach.

Surrealism and artists like Rene Magritte have influenced periods of my art, including this series. I was creating paintings where you could imagine walking into the scene and thinking, ‘What a strange but fantastic scenario’.