oil on canvas, 100x100cm
I am often asked whether drawing precedes painting. The answer is that drawing is a separate thing and that drawing may well take place whilst painting is in progress. This happens often to lots of people: drawing might clarify something; it might happen for an entirely (seemingly) unrelated reason; it might be just for its own sake. I draw a lot. I draw mostly from my garden. But this drawing was made without looking at a piece of my parochial world. I drew away from the windows. I drew freely, without thinking too much and I drew having already started the painting with big blocks of colour more like a loose Paul Klee than what I have now. Most of all - and here so far I have failed - I started out to make a painting about marks, a kind of field painting which could move beyond the renaissance window. So the act of drawing led me astray or led me somewhere else.
