….. why people say that when they were young they wanted to be a train driver! I spent today working with a colleague, stripping the old varnish from the floor of the Unit 9 Gallery. (This is a little group-cooperative art gallery attached to the South Square Centre, in Bradford.) The place was in need … Read more
I really am beginning to wonder about some aspects of my current project, presenting a personal artistic response to the experience of Italy during the Great War. My initial response to the idea of working in this area depended upon the belief that war and its consequences would be something that everybody could grasp (to … Read more
This is Shakespeare’s Polonius, in Hamlet, of course, advising his son about to leave home. Get the good stuff if you can afford it. I wish I had. Some time ago I encountered the kind of deal you think you can’t refuse, on artist’s paint brushes. Now I get round to using them I find … Read more
Well, today I’ve been “snail painting”. It is incredible just how slowly this picture is developing. It depends upon a very tight composition, so that small deviations of line and shifts in the relative position of elements could throw things out. It has been one of those days when I seem to spend far more … Read more
The short answer is to attempt something in which the emotional potential of the idea seems impossible to control, even before you have started to paint. My Italian project is moving ahead quite well; but today I began a new piece that has worried me from the moment I had the initial idea. Never before … Read more
This is the title given by the members of the Unit 9 Gallery to our forthcoming exhibition (to run through the later part of August and September). The idea is that each of the members will submit for exhibition in the gallery not only a finished piece of art, but also the materials which went … Read more
In one respect today has been a good day. I have made good progress with another piece towards my project based on Italian experience during the First World War. At the back of my mind all day, however, has been another war …. the conflict in Palestine. The more I reflect on this situation the … Read more
…. sorting out the filing cabinet, filling in my income tax return, making a new investment of a recent commission fee, doing some decorating in the house, cutting and storing fire wood ready for the winter. But I’m not. I’m painting, painting, painting, and that’s how it’s going to stay for the rest of this … Read more
I received today the first photographs of my windows for St. Alban’s Church in Shrivenham, as they approach completion. This has been an odd experience, because it has not often been the case that I have had to hand over a piece of my work and entrust it to somebody else to complete it. My … Read more
By which I mean, make a public declaration of intention, running the risk of looking silly if I don’t do what I say I will do. I made it! Setting aside several temptations to do quite different things, I have made a start on a new picture, intended for my new Italy series. I prepared … Read more