what do I ask myself when I finish a new artwork?

The intention is to achieve a kind of flow, allowing the outcomes to emerge where they will, without (too much) pre-determination. To let go of my innate need to control. The only planning with these paintings, such as it is, is a decision on the colours to be used.

It’s difficult for painting - abstract or not - to fully escape the pictorial window, where 'figures' seem to be positioned within 'space'. So how can one dissolve this foreground / background duality?

This year I've been imposing limits on my creativity and paradoxically, doing so has opened up broad vistas of compositional possibility.

Marketing dictates that categorisation is essential. If you want people to find your work, it needs a label.

A painting resists the temporally structured unfolding that defines music or poetry.

The painting is covered in a mix of oil and emulsion paint but it's more of a construction and a carving than a painting.

The artist serves as the first audience for their new artwork, the first person to bear witness to its introduction into the world.

The square is decided for us. All we have to do is decide what to put inside it.

This year I'm taking an improvisational approach to painting and limiting my palette to black.

Sometimes unnatural is the only thing that makes sense.

What if I draw a broken window and then cut it up and re-arrange it to create another level of brokenness?

This piece went through many changes before I considered it finished. It was the same panels of wood but was it the same painting?

One warm weekend in September 2020 I started putting paint down on eight 24 x 24 inch panels.

Whilst there is a modus operandi of iteration, destruction and re-creation common to all my pieces, each presents a unique set of challenges

If something anaesthetic dulls the senses, the aesthetic experience wakens and stimulates the senses - not pleasantly necessarily.

Overall, I was satisfied with the result but there was one part of the painting that my eye kept returning to. Something irritating.