Companions

In the making of these two paintings it had not occurred to me that they might be hung together until I laid them out on the studio floor and found them to be visually linked. It is not my usual practice to make a sequence and the paintings do not normally follow one another in any way, rather I try not to let that happen. However, in this case I would like them to be seen together, with the lower of the two here on the left.

Editing

This , from Sister Wendy Becket's interview with the American painter, Robert Natkin. In a reply he says that he doesn't see a difference between what is and what could be. In the finality of it the editing process is what he thinks a person (Becket) might call prayer and which in his case is considered the editing process of how he can make all aspects of his life be of some positive value. This strikes a cord in that life is not a narcissistic thing beginning and ending with oneself, but rather an engagement with humanity - approached with humility, nakedness even.

Bicci di Lorenzo

In the Ashmolean museum at Oxford there is a little painting by this Florentine artist, depicting a scene from the Life of St. Nicholas. The work can be seen to be divided more or less in two halves of light with the arrival of the saint, and dark, where the sky merges with the sea and the horizon is less clear. The sailors appear to be throwing something overboard , perhaps their belongings , perhaps something else. In three paintings that I made a few years ago I focussed on this object: there are times when something strikes me and there is a confluence of ideas that I need to respond to . I tried to do this here. In the history of my family there is an incident of incarceration, a straight jacket, a loss. I was already working with this when this beautiful painting was shown to me.