Cut paper is conventionally associated with the home-made, the cheap and amateur; it is usually small scale, domestic and decorative; it is often adopted to make intimate personal pieces such things as Valentines, or silhouette portraits; traditionally it has been a pastime for women and children, and the medium of such trivial ephemera as greetings cards and Christmas decorations. Simon Periton has re-invented cut paper work as a dramatic large-scale graphic medium. He tacitly acknowledges and sometimes exploits the antecedents and associations of the process, even as he subverts them. His cut paper pieces are large-scale, often wall-size or even installations. The works themselves explore sophisticated and often complex ideas, using pictorial means, and through the use of pattern, repetition and abstraction. He has described these works - which he refers to as 'doilies' - as having "fragile patterns" into which he can "entwine sex, death, religion, pop, current affairs, art history - anything". The process may be inherently simple and low-tech, but Periton achieves extraordinary effects, and much fine detail, and uses layering and colour to create pictorial effects, and also the illusion of volume and recession.

In 'Lantern 2' Periton represents a feature of domestic architecture - specifically a bay window of the kind typical of British suburban architecture, in particular the commonplace Victorian housing stock. Here the window is represented ambiguously - the central panel could be panes of glass or breeze blocks. The lettering is blurred, crude - a graffiti-style text which echoes 19th century cut-paper work incorporating mottoes and aphorisms.

Like Matisse, who made cut paper collages in his later life, Periton describes his cut paper works as drawings, saying "Any drawing I might do is done with a scalpel…A pencil line can always be erased but a knife cut has a certainty that appeals to me."