His work does not depict the world around him, but he nevertheless maintains that it is not abstract, as it responds to the world in which he lives and the emotions that he experiences. Until 1988 he worked in a figurative manner, but after a stay in Amsterdam, where he was confronted by the uncompromisingly abstract work of such artists as Barnett Newman and Lucio Fontana, he abandoned the mythological themes in his art and aimed at greater honesty, clarity and directness. The breakthrough came when he painted a leaf on a piece of corrugated cardboard From Memory (1989). The painted image sank into the vertical corrugations and became part of the history of the material. It was a revelation and was to lead directly to the way that Innes works to this day.