Cross is primarily a painter engaged with 'world making.' The act of painting for him is a means to explore the inner life and strangeness of the ordinary. Each work begins in reality, with recognizable limbs and elements of landscape, which transform into uncanny scenes. Biomorphic landscapes speak to mythologies, but in Cross's paintings the narratives are knowingly ambiguous. Familiar and mysterious, quiet and epic, scale and irregularity in proportion puzzles the viewer.

Known for paintings which are deliberately hard to place in history, there is a timelessness to Cross's works, reminiscent of unearthed artifacts. Paintings are made in contemplative layers; the pigments remain vibrant - his application and exquisite use of colour creates works that hum. Cross strives to make paintings that have lived a life, the trace of their existence evident.