It’s been a very long time since I wrote here, but through thick and thin I have been painting. As one of my favourite artists, David Bomberg, instructed his students to do I’ve made sure to ‘keep the paint moving’ and my work has been developing.

Several large pieces are on the go, which seem to be finished but I’m occasionally returning to them when I notice something that asks to be changed.

There are also a number of small studies I’ve been doing to ‘move the paint’, keep the flow and not let things stagnate. Most are views of the garden, which has some trees with great character. One tall spruce in particular has such personality that it looks like something from a Nordic Symbolist picture. When it moves in the wind it appears to dance with arms and needly hands upraised and a swaying ‘waist’. I’m not sure I’ve captured it yet but it’s fun trying.

Doing this series was a form of art therapy during a psychologically turbulent time, or perhaps you could even say it was a kind of therapy by tree. The garden paintings began by being more natural and gradually transformed into more expressive and weird representations. Finally, something had been resolved and the work became more rushed and less interesting and I stopped the series at that point.

And finally to end on a calmer (?) note, I have included a couple of paintings of flowers from the same garden. These were sweet peas in reality but seem to have transformed themselves into more substantial blooms when made of paint.