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 potentially endless strokes of serendipity when manipulated.

The ways in which a few carefully (un)considered splattered daubs, once filtered through imagination and mental libraries, can trigger familiarity, carry meaning or even summon up memories and emotion, is a kind of alchemy to me.

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

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

My approach is to firstly establish a loose, semi-abstracted 'landscapey' structure.

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

In working this way I am trying to capture those elusive marks that describe more than perhaps they should. All the while I endeavour 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