Alli Sharma interviews painter Benjamin Bridges whose work is on view at dalla Rosa Gallery, London, from March 14 – April 12, 2014.

Bridges comments: "When you make a painting you start with nothing and sometimes the underpainting is really beautiful and then it goes up and down in waves. You try to leave the painting at that point where it hits the crest of the wave before it drops and you have to make it into something else. It goes from a fresh painting into something laboured, but more beautiful. You have to go through that process. If you can get within say 20 percent of the top you just stop because you know you can get it closer but you let the work go. So with some of these paintings there is just the stain of the original canvas and sometimes there are marks that keep being worked. Those pieces are often simple in the end but there is so much underneath that makes it something new."