Early summer trunk.

oil on canvas. 50x50cm

oil on canvas. 30x30cm

I am ducking reworking a larger painting which has already been repainted several times. I am being cowardly and I know it: I thought that I had finished ( Painting for my mother ) but I know it won't do so in the meantime worked on these two: restarting the bigger piece and doing a lot of sitting down, getting up, looking at the bush, the light and dark, trying to remember my mother, being quite sure that I don't know enough about her or how she thought or for that matter how she lived brings me to the brush, the material of the paint and an odd mental juxtaposition  that whilst the painting is not a metaphor for loss, it is about change and about the only thing over which I have control.

Two garden paintings.

It was Van Gogh who said something like that one person could provide material for many paintings and I feel the same way about the narrow view of my garden. It is always different, always challenging, always providing opportunities.

I photograph my garden a lot: I don't refer to them when I'm painting but they do capture a lot of information that I can use to remind myself of shifts in shadow and how blocks of light and dark can work together. Sometimes they provoke me into considering possibilities that I might otherwise miss and together with the drawings, help to search for some truth. There is quite a difference between these two, given that they have been made within days of each other and I find myself moving between closely observed painting and that which allows for more reordering, invention, call it what you will. It is however still rooted in the view, in the bush as object, in the space as theatre.

Context

This is a painting that I started just after I turned sixty six and four years later and much repainting I am at a stage where I might let it rest. Is it a likeness? Well, if it and my head were ever to be exhibited together, then maybe but does it really matter? Painting a portrait is about many things, certainly about paint; certainly about context. The painter changes from day to day, hour to hour: the accretion of paint, the working of the paint in fact is as important as the scrutinisation of the head being painted. There are many self portraits which are about the act of painting rather than making a likeness but the questioning that goes on - is it like this, is it more like that? Is it more yellow, is it Naples yellow or Naples Yellow and a touch of Raw Umber ; what is that shape? where is that line exactly?

In Malcom Gladwell's book The Tipping Point (2000) he states that context is crucial to all varieties of human behaviour. We are affected by both large and minute changes and what I am at any one time and in any one place changes as a mutating human organism. So it is indeed a moving target.

I have a friend who entered a competition, filmed in the manner of The Great British Bake Off. She attempted to get a likeness of her sitter without the aid of tablets and squaring up apps. She looked, she applied brush to canvas, she watched the clock. I admire her guts because I wouldn't be able to do that. I need time, years obviously. I will revisit the portrait because it is very interesting and because next time it will be different again. And I am my own sitter and am always here -  for now.

A painting for my mother.

                                                                  the bush. oil on canvas

My mother liked order in her garden, plants well spaced, plenty of soil visible and found the apparent chaos of mine (no soil visible, only gravel) puzzling. Why is it so full? she would wonder. Gardening is trying to force nature into constraints that are the antithesis of wildness. There is a symbiotic relationship between my gardening and my painting. I have to cut a hedge before I can begin to paint it: I have to mow before I can see where to draw.

                                                                charcoal on paper.

Three small garden views and a thank you.

My travels between England and France have taken a toll: at the same time they have, in the time allotted between visits  meant that I could plunge into these small paintings with a kind of abandon that celebrates living and I think, has carried me through the grey days . A parent dies and yet everything continues. I am happy to keep painting, comfortable with saying goodbye and thanks.

Taking time out.

To record something of myself at seventy. Yes, seventy. A number, a state of being which seems to have caught me by surprise although I must have seen it coming. Anyway, it is what it is so one just continues come what may.

The painting is itself no matter what the season. Four paintings in winter.

It can be transcriptive; it can be mimetic: essentially it is a creative act which succeeds or fails in its ability to create an engagement beyond the making of something out of nothing.
It needs to be painting as painting, painting first - for me, subject, as in the view of my garden, second, and painting last.
Paintings don't last long with me. They are a means to an end but painting lasts because it is elusive; searched for; longed for.