Backwards and forwards.

It does seem that part of the process is to step back, often inadvertently, looking again at what has gone before. So it is that whilst making these paintings there has been a revision and the drawings have become more representational and yet this was not intentional and rather surprising because I was focussed entirely on the marks that drawing produced. Indeed, like the process of

painting at the moment, I was working up close: at the surface of the painting I could not and did not want to see the edges of the support and in the drawings I tried to ignore the edges even though I was aware of them. I now have a wish to slow the drawings down. This has been put into practice in the making of the paintings because I have finally forced myself to keep overpainting, keep painting up close, risking losing coherence, trusting to luck and turning the painting to the wall when I leave it so that I don't see it entire yet.