Jack Roberts uses painting as a means to create cultural artefacts. He uses the lens of his own experience to try to explore wider issues – principally our connection to place and our personal relation to society at large. He grew up in the English countryside, and so is interested in exploring how we relate to the land where we live, and how that forms who we are and what we value. He likes to play around with what he thinks are constructed notions, such as national identity, and their fragility when placed under close scrutiny. Through visiting sites such as Wayland’s Smithy, a neolithic burial site, he collects impressions of how people in the past have used the land to form a cultural identity. He also uses his experience as someone who is mentally ill to create works that can serve as a representation of his community, in particular the community of people living with OCD worldwide. As a practising Buddhist, he also brings in ideas of myth and religious devotion into his paintings, wanting his work to be seen in the wider context of religious painting.