I’m very pleased to say that I’m able to put some new work on the website once more. It’s been difficult one way and another to even consider this, as family and friends will understand, but a few sunny days before winter set in took me back to the workshop after many months away. The result has been two Still Life paintings in memory of Liz, especially her scarves, which were a kind of signature of who she was.
A word about Still Lifes and titles in general here. The conventional form – Still Life with Vase/Tulips/Apples, for example – seems banal to me. I prefer a different form or source for a title – from popular music for example, and have Will and Joe to thank for the titles of these two paintings: ‘Yellow is the Colour’ and ‘For You, Blue’ (from Donovan, of course, and George Harrison).
I’ve also started what I think of as a series of paintings of ‘pathways’ – an all-too- meaningful theme, I’m afraid; but what fascinates me is the ambiguity of pathways – where the destination may be known or familiar, and in view, as it were, but literally out of sight. And there can be obstacles, delays, diversions, or mistakes. You can even get lost. And this is to say nothing about how our minds at the same time scurry this way and that, forward and back. So far these paintings are local to Ringmer and include three small preliminary sketches, but I hope to extend this series to include the Lewes ‘twittens’ (narrow lanes running North–South, to and from the High Street) with all their bends, high walls, doors that seem permanently locked, bricked-in window sites: everyday examples, that is to say, of an expected, but obscured, confined, and delayed destination. The titles of these current works have the same source in long-remembered or favourite lines in popular music. For those who don’t know or only vaguely remember, ‘Step One … Step Two … Step Three’ is from the early rock-and-roller, Eddie Cochran.