On re-discovering paint after a lengthy hiatus, I find myself, once again, 'up to the eyes' in the stuff.

I am fascinated by the serendipitous nature of it and the infinite mark-making possibilities it holds; the idea that a few carefully (un)considered splattered daubs, once filtered through imagination and mental libraries, may trigger recognition, carry meaning or even summon up memories and emotion, is a kind of alchemy to me.

I work in oil on both oil-primed board and oil paper. And for the most part I work from memory and imagination.

However, to qualify that, I practice En Plein Air oil sketching, as an ongoing exercise in enhancing that mental catalogue of what actually constitutes figurative landscape.

My approach is to firstly destroy the picture surface with a series of loose, random brush strokes...daubs, if you will.

I then attempt to pursue those early marks that appear 'familiar' to me, but in a more subconscious, rapid and carefree manner.

Working this way allows me a greater chance of capturing those elusive marks that describe more than perhaps they should.

Throughout the process I continually scrape, wipe, sometimes even obliterate and restart (I have found, much to my chagrin, that backing a winner crucially involves at the least a breathing horse!).

Once I have established some kind of semi-solid foundation, I hope, at that stage, abstract ideas on mood, feeling, sense of place etc. begin to reveal themselves.

All the while I try to maintain a decent tempo helping to avoid the universal shackles of deep-seated facsimile, 'old hatness' and paint-blending death.

The goal is to create more visually interesting morsels of goodness and less painted firewood!

To that end the struggle to find an economy of stroke, deftness of execution and an outcome something a little less ordinary, inevitably, but gloriously, goes on…

'up to the eyes'

This was something my dear dad used to say to us growing up in the North East…

"Am warnin' ye mind, divvent come back up to the eyes in clarts!"

Not sure if it's a Geordie thing or if it was just a My Dad thing!

clarts = mud