Experience is always the present moment.

      

                                                       detail. oil on wood. from A Man and his friends. 130x130cm.


Painting a head (my head) is preparing to fail. I begin with a mixture of optimism and trepidation and experience frustration, imagine that the work is progressing and realize that it is not. I can't give up although I so often want to, so it is scraped down, restarted. It is all I can do and I cannot stop.

Work in progress.

My painting is a fluid process.

 I don't have an identifiable goal. It develops, sometimes well, sometimes not. Along the way there are reverses of fortune and re-workings; some areas that hold on until quite late succumb and I paint over these areas wondering why I held on to them for so long. The photo record shows where the painting might have stayed, where it has disappeared: stasis is not my wish, not yet. I can always think of an addition, an erasure. I feel forced into rebuilding the image, moving towards a conclusion which maybe hours or months away and sometimes years.

Painting is thinking.

oil on canvas. 50x50cm.

 

photo collage. 10x10cm

                                                            
                                                          photo collage. 10x12cm.

And this one was amusing.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/110999204275429396091/posts/1gdLgR9k7di

Painting in progress.

I found this today, filmed in 2010 I think . A glimpse of part of my process  to the sound of Keith Jarrett.

Winter/Spring/Winter

                                        
                                         winter/spring/winter. oil on canvas. 80x80 cms.



Which is just how it has been, in the land as much as in my studio. I had mentioned that I was working on something else and this has been scraped down so many times as I tried to do more with less - though I might have just ended up with  less - and juggled thoughts about the difference between thinking about paint and thinking in paint. I have to put this away now because I have already made big changes to another recent painting .The back and forth between the two has been a head-ache so it was a welcome change to go out into the snow today before returning to stoke up the stove and get back into Mr. Elkins.

End of year paintings.

oil on canvas 160x120 cms.

oil on canvas 160x120 cms.

I feel that there might be a chance that these paintings mark a shift: it could be nothing of course but a year of painting has brought me here and it feels different. There is probably more work to be done but I have something else on the go too so I'll put these aside for a while and read a good book.

I am still dipping into James Elkins and this piece seems relevant: Like Alchemy, Painting has always been insecure about its most basic store of information. Perhaps the alchemical labor is the work of a full, long lifetime, spent scouring the libraries of Europe and preparing elaborate, year long experiments....but on the other hand it might be a flash of inspiration or a moment of supreme profound comprehension.  Contrast something learned slowly, from the ground up, in a four year course or a long apprenticeship with something intuitive. Perhaps great painting happens like that, with no planning at all.

New /Old landscape painting.

  
                                                  Hedge. oil on canvas. 160x120cms.


Starting a new painting is like taking up with an old friend: time has passed and what one thought one knew has been challenged by the interval. Beginning again is often about learning a new perspective. One thinks that the ground is familiar and indeed it is but there is often new stuff which comes out in the course of the renewed conversation.

This is very much how it feels with the last two paintings. I am familiar with the source material, the world outside my window, the paths around me, the photographs that I have taken, the actions of my hand and eye and yet something unexpected can happen, something not seen previously. It may be just a small thing or an accretion of small things which adds to my understanding.

I was in England recently: didn't see any shows but in a friends house saw a small painting, a still life, the result of his contemplation of painting, which made me anxious to return to work. In another friends house two drawings, one by John Minton and one by John Muscutt which re-affirmed my sometimes shaky recognition of fine drawing.

Small encounters add up.