Daydreams

It's not always easy for me to put into words something like a painting on which I've probably spent several months. It's a bit like writing a poem about a partition of music, two completely different media. But I could explain how I go about setting up a painting and its evolution from abstract to figurative.

The fact that I never start a painting from sketches or a preconceived idea is very liberating and I enjoy playing around with spontaneous lines and washes of colour, a bit like automatic writing. The concentration involved leads to a semi-subliminal state, where I almost feel like a spectator, until a certain form or shape on the canvas will spark off an idea. The painting is still very fluid at this stage and during the following hours and days may evolve in many directions. This is where the rag comes in handy for removing passages of colour, blending in others before I'll often turn the canvas on its head and resume in another direction. It's tiring, but never tedious.

I'm not always conscious of the motivation behind the subject matter in many of my paintings and it's only much later in the evolution of the work that I regain a bit more control of the contents and things are added or removed depending on how I'm feeling on the day, sometimes in discord with the original set-up. I like to think of my paintings as daydreams, not always logical, but personal insights into my world.