Right. Ive had to change the lighting. Not sure how i feel about it. Mostly i work in poor light conditions. Why? Because the light as it presents itself is one of many materials and I’m interested in working as much as possible with what is to hand? Why? That’s for another time. But also because i like not being distracted by detail. Poor light means i can work generally and not get painterly? Why? That’s for another time too because the main point i want to make here is one of the great struggles one faces is the encroachment of the landscape. There’s the encroachment of the figurative too of course and in this painting I am now struggling with both. In fact let me add a third – the encroachment of the symbolic. What? I mean the human brain is good at identifying pattern, or rather it is a pattern maker. Regardless of whether pattern is intrinsic to nature, which it is, the encroachment is limiting and if one isn’t careful, one starts to think ooh – something is presenting itself here, something to be interpreted, or even ooh look I have painted a landscape, a figure, a symbol. But this would mean surrendering to the superficial, the surface where we spend all of our lives already. The echo-chamber of our own brain (aot mind) where pattern is just repeated data on a feedback loop of degrading value.

On another note I’ve noticed that a lot of abstract painters are into scratching their paint – in a sort of neurotic extension of this so called mark-making in art. If i ever start scratching then it means I’ve failed.