How I define my current activity depends very much on the mood I’m in. I’ve reached that stage in my current painting when it sits on the easel, opposite the door to the studio, so that every time I go past it I catch a glimpse of it. On each occasion an impression is registered, and in the course of time some details that really need correction begin to stand out.
One such process of correction has been under way for two days now. One small area of red was too dense, for example, and attracted for more attention than it should. It has taken me four glazes of thin white paint to take it back to a level at which it no longer draws too much attention to itself. As Kurt Vonnegut used to say, “So it goes!” I like to describe this as a process of “refinement”, but have to admit that if it is permitted to go on for two long it degenerates into fiddling. I think that I am just about satisfied with it, although my wife has been disturbingly silent recently. Has she spotted something I haven’t?
To ensure that I didn’t become obsessively involved with the picture today I committed myself to a major task in the garden …. trimming one side of the large hedge separating us from the street. The beech is fine, but the invasive ivy and bramble needed quite dramatic intervention, not to mention a holly tree that is getting to be too big for its boots. I was kept company be the robins. I was curious the other day to read that in continental Europe robins are regarded as shy creatures, whereas here they dart in almost to your feet to see what you are digging up. It’s interesting, isn’t it? The birds reverse the national stereotypes of British reserve in contrast to continental sociability.