Summer afternoon ,storm approaching.

oil on panel. 160x120cms.

Painting from observation is not quite what it may seem: not plein- air in this case, rather a distillation of looking out at, being out in, collaging photographs of and pulling together disparate elements of the experience (s) of an event.

D.H.Lawrence once opined that landscape doesn't call up the more powerful responses of the human imagination, the sensual, passional responses. Hence it is the favourite modern form of expression in painting. There is no deep conflict...The english have delighted in landscape,and have succeeded in it well. It is a form of escape for them from their actual body that they so hate and fear.

I don't agree. Even in a secular age as we are experiencing in the West I think that there is the possibility of a very deep response to the experience of painting from nature. Procreation and death ; knowledge of transient passage, and to this is added the problem of how paint can be itself and yet stand for something else.

In these paintings I do not want to replicate in paint the objects around me but I do want to say something about how I perceive them, how I stand in relation to the experience.

For me that is the fundamental problem.