Peter Arscott

My work has progressed over the years from a particular interest in the figure, usually in a landscape, to pure abstraction and then to a loose still-life abstraction, leading to a series using the simple shape of the table as a starting point. My paintings are often figurative in that they refer to objects – but because they are not copies of nature, they are also abstract to the degree necessary for paintings. My work is not a rich vibrant seduction of colour, nor does it celebrate mystery, magic or love, rather it has to start with something speculative. The mark-making, the scraping, the layering and the removal of paint, the wet-in-wet painting, are not conscious techniques but necessary means of reaching that moment when a work is "right", when it becomes singular and particular _ additions, subtractions and revisions may then eventually turn out as something worth keeping, and it is during this process that memory, landscape, music, poetry, doodles, dreams, ploughed fields, crop up to inform my work, and to lend it a certain mood. The titles of the paintings sometimes refer to this.