SEQUENCES

These 8 images show the development of a recent painting. There were a number of colour decisions, not photographed here, made in between several of the stages but the general development of colour and line in the painting can be seen. This work had a particular "temperature" that was emerging and I kept working, painting it out and in to fine tune that temperature. The final painting (number 8) is called "The Squeeze" 2018 acrylic on canvas and is 130cm x 80cm wide. This painting underwent further revisions before completion.

2017 information

I have recently had a book published on my work. It is part discursive, instructive, theoretical and reflective. It covers paintings from my student days up to the present. Some of the content that been written after experiences gained through teaching my classes at the Royal Academy. The book is available in paperback and ebook through Amazon and other online retailers. Please see the link on the announcement bar at the top of the website to the Amazon listing.

I was delighted this year to have my website archived by the National Library of Wales as a site of historical importance to the culture of Wales.

Musical spaces

(Blog app testing) Rock and roll looks to be the music of relationships; jazz feels like a music of community - it feeds off an audience and classical music is the music of solitude. Similarly painting operates in these ways in people’s lives. 

Comment on drawing

I do not identify drawing in terms of delineation or as a vehicle for tone, rather I see it in much broader way as the 'mechanics of making.' I am an abstract painter and handling colour through painting requires organisation, strategy and that old chestnut, persistence. These qualities are, to my mind, determined holistically by drawing. Getting the drawing up to speed establishes how successful the painting will be - how well made it will be. Colour is the seeing - drawing is the making. I will often draw after making a painting to look at the lateral forces at play and explore further possibilities. Taking these forces back into paint compels me to be confident and this in turn dictates my sense of scale. Everything comes from the drawing.

Decoration....

Decorative as in not having a specific descriptive function which obeys acquired rules of construction (“compare European sculptures based upon the ‘muscle’ with African ones based upon the medium” Matisse paraphrased) Did Picasso ever escape this approach or rather moved to the extreme end of the same axis…? , not decorative as in not just a ‘streamlined’ arrangement of colour and pattern (Louis Valtat a minor example, though if you want to start a sword fight with anyone – compare with Derain?)- this is the notion of colours just existing in their own right with no “pressure” (witness recent discussions on Abcrit) , decorative as in a full synthesis of perceived – real, fluid- space translated into painted space -(absorbing and extending the lesson of Cézanne and NOT coming up with cubism which took his vernacular and returned it to point 1 – see above), not decorative as in a systematic synthetic formatting (which is where twentieth century modernism went). I think it’s such a complex word to explore and may well continue to be redefined. Matisse saw colour as a “force” and used colours which “collide” into one another, however his painting journey to get to the late 40s (for it was a wilfully investigative one) was delightfully meandering and lit up so many intriguing side roads (for so many others to wander down).

The heat of synthesis

Although Cézanne’s approach was to synthesise what he saw, he maintained the nineteenth century instinct to depict. I think his level of synthesis is what transcended his depiction and made him essential for the twentieth century and why it still resonates so deeply today in the twenty first (not for some…perhaps). The issue of synthesis needs a new focus maybe; the relationship between what is seen and what is made does not pivot on depiction. It is far more symbiotic than that (not for some…perhaps). A writer wants a narrative. You cannot escape this; it is this desire that has fuelled the rise of curation. Curation is rooted in the literal. At its best it can be enlightening but it is never ‘essential’. If a painting has gone through the necessary heat of synthesis, it should come out fully cooked – any trace of the mix means it’s not done yet. A post modern lens will always pardon the lack of this ‘essential’ as a quality as the oven is never on anyway so everything gets served cold.