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?

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.

This quote from Barnett Newman made me chuckle, "Aesthetics is to artists what ornithology is to birds".

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

If we draw a cowboy on a horse, we simultaneously draw the shape around the cowboy on his horse. We create what we do and don't intend.

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.

Convenient as it is for curators and art historians to divide art into distinct form v expression camps, creativity resists pigeonholing.

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?

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

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