Here are three paintings which seem to be defining a new resultant vector amongst the scatter of my paintings over the last few months. In other words, a new direction maybe to lead me out of the sense of dispersion. It does not accord exactly with any of the groupings of attributes encompassed by that previous work, and yet it seems to flow from them, or some of them. And then there are new attributes to account for aswell.

I have to remember that this is happening partly because I reached a point where I could say definitively that some of the paintings I had done were too unsatisfying to show. What to do then? Why, paint them over, of course! the process of reconstructing those images is a very different one from the process of starting a new painting from scratch. Apart from anything else, I don't have to worry about what to start with – its given. Then, wiping off some kind of drawing, or deconstructing it, or at least weakening it, in some way, is fascinating in itself. So the fact that some new ‘look' emerges in this process, is not surprising.

Its not that I haven't worked like this before. I have done so in the past (with a sense of satisfaction in it, as it happens) and I started out this very phase of my painting doing just that, painting over work from the last show I had at Watters. But then I got into the idea that I wanted to work on a blank canvas again, which I did with mixed success. I suppose there are so few limits in doing this that the decision-making is rather awesome, and each work can go off in so many different directions that it fairly drives me crazy. As always, I prefer having something given to me to work with (albeit given by ME!), so that there are restraints to work with and against.

I'm not sure these paintings are finished, but it is the very looseness of them that appeals to me, even though it is different kind of looseness than that which occurred when working solely with watered-down acrylics. This is oil painting – fluffy and thin admittedly – but it is BRUSHED and there is something quite disarming about that, and utterly different from the flows that happen when watery acrylic is blown across the canvas with a hair dryer.

---

I wish I could worry less about the ‘success' of my paintings. By success, I really mean success in my own eyes, rather than success in a social sense. I think that success ‘in the world' can help to strengthen the sense of personal success and achievement, but it is not so much an end in itself.

Its very hard to even comprehend what personal success might mean. Harder still to measure it. The key to the first statement (‘I wish…."), is that I wish I could WORRY less. I am not inclined to wish my paintings were better. I know that its almost impossible to judge that at all, so its rather meaningless to want them to be better. And yet that is exactly what my anxiety is about – the anxiety is about the intangible, and unmeasurable, qualities of the work. So my rational response is to wish, not that they are better, but that I don't worry about it so much. There is a residual worry that if I get rid of the anxiety about their quality, the quality will actually deteriorate. Rationally, this doesn't stand up at all. Anxiety rarely leads to better outcomes. Nor is the absence of anxiety the same as self-satisfaction, or sloppiness or laziness. This is a fine point, and it turns on what are the real drivers of progress. It could be argued that progress happens just as effectively in the absence of fear and anxiety, or even more so. Anyway, noone would, in their right mind, choose to subject themselves to anxiety, just to get a good result. It is more a question of whether one tolerates the anxiety, and whether the question about it being a useful 'prod' to working effectively, is just an adjunct to that tolerance, rather than a useful tool in itself. Whether one chooses to tolerate anxiety also depends on what alternatives to that there may be. One needs effective tools to wipe out anxiety. If there were simple tools available to do this, then a lot of unhappiness would be banished from the world! its not a straightforward business. There are drugs, and then there are psychological strategies, such as cognitive behavioural therapy, meditation etc. And then there is always the possibility of developing one's own personal strategies. But this can be very difficult.

Those kinds of tools do not, in themselves, deal directly with what would seem, at least superficially, to be the object of the anxiety. In other words, they deal with the response of a person to their situation, rather than the situation itself. In my case, the issue of anxiety relates directly to my painting. But of course it is in my REACTION to that situation that the anxiety arises. The anxiety IS my reaction. I would like to change my perception of the paintings, rather than change something further down the chain of action.

Desire to paint

> activity of painting
> paintings
> perception of paintings
> anxiety

Some would say that the anxiety IS the driver for doing more work, because this is a circle:

This is interesting, because it points to the issue of what does drive the work on. Perhaps its as simple as renaming anxiety in this circle. There are other ways of looking at the state of mind that leads to new activity, but it is likely to be a complex state, and one word may not describe it accurately. If I could define clearly what I would like to substitute for anxiety here, without losing the momentum of the circular activity, then I might be able to dispense with the negative aspects, and keep the positive ones (with subsequent progress as the circle continues to turn).

Clearly, what is needed is a state that ‘sees' what would be a positive development from what exists (the current state of painting). Ideally, it senses that changes will lead to a more satisfying, or stimulating (or whatever it is that you want a painting to do to the viewer), result. It should see that something has already been achieved, which is a necessary stepping-stone to the next stage. This is already a more positive way of looking at what has been done, rather than seeing it in ‘deficit' terms – ie. what it fails to achieve. It takes all the work done so far, and somehow attempts to form a new trajectory from that. It is analytical in some senses, but necessarily intuitive, because the factors here can only partly be subjected to rational analysis.

Above all, it requires a close examination of the work in question, but in a context that does not generate anxiety. So exactly where, in all of this, does the anxiety come from? I think that it only really arises when the work is compared in some way with other areas of the field, outside of one's own practice. So it is a socially generated anxiety, perhaps a ‘status anxiety', as described by Alain de Botton. This is a huge problem in art, because everyone seems to need to contend that only their own practice is relevant, and by implication that all other practices are useless and irrelevant. It is almost the prime consideration in the presentation of artwork that what is being presented is not only the MOST significant work around, but that it is the ONLY work that matters. There are numerous ways in which the status of art is (often falsely) elevated by curatorial tricks. Its not so very different from any other kind of marketing, and it seems quite central to our capitalist economy. To think that one might be able to ignore, and be unaffected by, such forces, is naive.

What strategies can I conjure up, then, to avoid this comparison with other work that is being actively promoted as superior, more relevant and altogether better than my own? The obvious first step would be to avoid looking at other people's work, especially in a gallery context. This approach is isolating, and not conducive to the idea that art progresses as a discourse, but it might be a good idea at times. When one is struggling with ones own direction, it does not necessarily help to look at how other people seem to be forging confidently ahead. ‘Seem' is the key word here, because there is a large amount of illusion and hype involved. The other strategy I could work on would be to hone my critical skills, in order to break through the illusions and see the other work for what it truly is, has truly achieved, which is often much less than is immediately apparent. But this is hard to do when you are feeling a tendency to anxiety anyhow. Why set yourself up to fail?

Whether or not its a good idea to shut myself off from the outside world at these times, it does seem that the main focus should be on my own work. Though I think of myself as analytical (and Alberto says I think too much!), there is a lot that is left rather casually to my intuition, and its very easy for doubts and worries to creep in. It may be that I will have to write out these thoughts more clearly, and possibly invite other people to consider the same issues, before I can rid myself of anxiety in this context.

---

Last week, I felt I needed to start something different, before I got bogged down in that rather muted brown painting. I'm reasonably happy with it, but nevertheless, something needed to lighten in my life!

So I restarted a very colourful work which I began a few months ago, but which had definitely got itself into a fix. There were far too many definite lines in there which divided up the space so much that the air had gone out of it. Nothing for it, but to paint some of them out. In doing so, a really interesting kind of texture in the paintwork is emerging. This is something a bit new, though I've noticed touches of it recently. Here are the two versions, with the older one above.

---

So much for trying to simplify this painting! True, its not finished yet, but it still looks pretty complex to me. But that might be the way it just has to be. We shall see, next week, when I hope to have it finished.

---

This is slowly getting more soft overall form to it, which is what I wanted. Its a bit less contrasty and that looks initially less exciting. So I am going to have to work on that.

---

---

It never fails to amaze me how each painting has an utterly different life. I don't think its necessarily apparent – at least not on quick appraisal – from looking at the final pictures. While from my point of view, they still look different when completed, other people seem to see them as part of a family, at least. The family resemblances might be seen as what other people call ‘style'. But just thinking about families, and considering talking about a family as having a ‘style' rather than similar looks, sounds so absurd. I'm equally flummoxed by the idea that my paintings are held together by style. Sometimes I don't feel that there's much that holds them together at all. But its not a good idea, I'm convinced, to try and force a painting into some kind of preconceived mould, some kind of ‘stylistic congruity' which will hold a group together (as a ‘body of work' – another expression which confuses me).

So, each one starts differently, and immediately takes off on its own individual journey. This one is quite different from the last – already! and I have only just begun…

---

Just one small corner done, but I think its working – a very soft simplification and gradually those forms look more confident.

---

The painting I started last week now needs serious work. This was the original start that I made months ago:

and then I went over that fairly emphatically last week, ending up with this:

So where next? Looking at this early stage, I see all sorts of potential forms, but not a lot of overall structure. However, I don't want to lose the most interesting of those forms, so I will first try and strengthen them with some more tone (thin acrylic) and only after that I might change the overall structure by darkening larger areas, or even lightening them (both of which will suppress the forms within). Ultimately, it needs a lot of simplification, but if I go too hard on this at the start, I might miss out on a lot of potential.

---

This painting is finally finished. I feel quite pleased with it. Deciding when it is time to stop is SO difficult. You have to stand somewhere in between the self who is totally engrossed in the process, for whom there is always something else to do, since the whole nature of the process is dynamic, and the self who will one day be able to view this painting as an object in an external world, not a process at all.

---

After putting on some more acrylic, mixing it with water (on the canvas, laid out flat), working on it a bit with the hairdryer, wiping it off again…

we have this

---

The first thing to do is to darken the whole painting a bit by putting on a thin layer of acrylic. I want this because otherwise, when I start drawing, or redrawing forms, the intensity of the tonal contrast when working over white or very light backgrounds has a negative effect. I prefer working on a neutral ground, where I can lighten or darken, and the process is gradual, rather than raw and immediate.

---

While I finish that last painting off in private, I'm going to start something new. This will be the first time I've done this with my new system. It might lead to a lot of posts, but that was the idea, after all.

I'm going back to this picture which I started a while ago, and left at this early stage.

---

I forgot to attach the image to that post. Here it is

---

This painting is near completion. There is some work to do to tidy it up, but the essence of the thing is there (and maybe has been for some time). Further changes won't be easily visible in photographs, so there's not much point in posting further pictures online.

---

This is way cool! I have set up my new WordPress blog so that posts on there automatically find their way to my facebook site. Also, I can email the blogs to WordPress, using my hyper-minimal email program Mutt – a linux classic, even adding images as attachments, like this…

I can also use vim for editing, and I never have to go near a browser, or the utterly confusing Wordpress gui, or facebook either for that matter. Now, to do some REAL work!

---

Alberto Grieve

In Peru, 2005, when I was visiting him

---

My dear friend Alberto (Alberto Grieve) who I have known and loved since we were at art school together in London from 1975, has just sent me a link to a video his friend Delia made about his painting. It is fantastic! so have a look (and maybe this might shed some light on where we all came from back there at St Martins, so many years ago).

The video about Alberto's painting

---

As it stands today; about to start working on it again (admittedly rather late in the day…)

---

New painting started last week; sequence is left to right, top to bottom (like lines of text!)

---

I have just transferred the blog from my website to here. There might be a few glitches which I will go through and iron out soon. I've left everything in place on the website, but anything new will be here (for as long as I find this easier to do!).

---