New painting in Spring.

                                           Exquisite greening of trees. oil on wood panel. 120x120cm.


It seems so surprising when an image gels as if from nowhere. I made this painting after standing looking at the garden and then leafing through photographs and collages that I had made earlier. Nothing stood out and in fact I was working on a self portrait when I knew, all of a sudden what to do.
So, Hildergard of Bingen, if you are out there I can only say thank you.

So here I am.

“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux geurres-
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learned to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered,
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate – but there is no competition –
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”


Four Quartets.T.S.Eliot.