Here and now

oil on canvas. 100x100cms

I admire John Constable's paintings. I have a suspicion that I have always done so. Overlooking our house from an elevated position one recent evening, I saw Golding Constable's garden, its light, its shadows; time compressed in an instant on this evening in France, in the Aveyron, on this evening in Suffolk in England. His painting an intimation of mortality, a here and now.

Lucien Freud once thought The Hay Wain silly but he changed his mind. A few years ago I went to see the Constable show at the V&A. I felt that I knew his paintings: I was wrong. I do remember thinking that they should be outside in the light and the air, in the heat and the rain so that those connections could be made and felt. Weather and noise. One of the things that interests me is that we do not think of noise in these landscapes and yet they would have been noisy places with people calling to one another, shouting; whistling; singing. I am aware of it though much reduced in my own surroundings: voices in the distances chain saw; a tractor; the cry of buzzards; kestrels; a Golden Oriole.

Time passing, one day to the next, one century to another. Here and now, in this moment and in that.