About

 
The making of paintings as a daily task relies on the investigation of possibilities and with this in mind I  have very little idea of how a painting or a drawing will look when finished. When I begin a work, often while listening to a favourite piece of jazz, there is a period of blind rumination. I try to find a way in and open a dialogue with the image  and maybe only after trial and failure will I see a glimpse of what I want or what may be possible. With a degree of hope  and assesment things can take shape in a matter of minutes or can be prolonged for an entire day. During the process there can be many changes, rubbing out, redrawing, changing colour hues or even scraping off hours of work. My work can take reference from many notes of sensation, memory of place as felt experience, the sea, a puddle, a blue door, jazz music, or it can simply refer back to the history of an earlier work. I have a preference for allowing happenstance to occur when making the work. This allows for a greater freedom and utilisation of brushwork, keeping things in motion, above all letting the idea of playfulness happen.  There are times when like magic, the work takes off quickly, decisions are made rapidly and everthing laid down on the surface has a freshness to it. A piece of work could be finished within an hour or two. However this may not always be the case. Some paintings have taken weeks to finish, though the question I often ask myself can time really be a measured thing when working on a painting.