Pistacios in the park....

It is all very well having a studio space, the tricky part is working out what to paint. Have an idea ready before your journey ends at the studio doors –you need to work out what you will do with your precious spare time. Is it worth it? Painting has been done to death. So you can prep the boards and make plenty of canvas stretchers, a universe of possibility waits in the form of the white gessoed surface. But I do plan out what I aim to paint. Not so much common objects. Even though figures and objects are not things to dismiss, they may appear anytime. Just flat layers, I tell myself. Choose a colour. Oil, acrylic or perhaps another medium? See what happens to the surface when it has been applied. A simple command or thought begs more questions than answers. Art shops sell a variety of different size brushes not to mention everything else. Explore what happens when you build up the surface or add another colour. Masking-tape is great and I use this alot too. Take it off and glimpse at the surface below. Photos are great and I wish I could paint everything I photographed. Drawing helps me in any of its forms. I have them around but they run parallel to the painting as visual prompts. The activity and time spent in my studio is great and compelling – when I am on a roll, I am opening new pathways in the work through a process of invention. However simplicity is often the most desirable option. A complex composition. Paintings often don’t work out for whatever reason. Then in a cull, I may cut up the cast aside painting, pull off the canvas I stuck on a wooden board, the new shape or reverse side renews my interest and I go again. When to stop painting? That is the tricky part when the brief can be so open-ended. So I build up relationships with the works, I have invested time, the paintings suggest and hint, intertwined painted layers of colour and texture.