Nine Months for One Painting
Working in thin layers means most of the time is spent waiting, which changes what the painting ends up being about.
The harbour painting took nine months. Perhaps three weeks of that was spent with a brush in my hand.
Thin Layers Need Time
Oil applied thinly is touch dry in two or three days and genuinely ready for the next layer in a fortnight. Rushing it produces a surface that sinks unevenly and looks, months later, as though someone was impatient. Which they were.
Which Is Why There Are Always Three
Working on one painting at a time would mean sitting in an unheated studio for a fortnight looking at something I am not allowed to touch. Three in rotation means there is always one ready. It also means the three talk to each other, and a colour decided in one migrates into the others without me quite noticing.
The Room Changes While You Paint It
Over nine months a chair moves, a lamp is replaced, the light in February is nothing like the light in June. I used to correct for this, repainting earlier passages to match. I have stopped. The painting now records a period rather than a moment, and that turned out to be the more honest thing.
Scraping Back Is Half the Work
A great deal of what I do is removing. A passage that took two weeks comes off with a blade in ten minutes, and the ghost it leaves — a stain of what was there — is usually better than what I was trying to make.
