Blue Mountains 1

The first of the 'Blue Mountains' series. Something came out in this painting, and I chased that something for a while. I desperately wanted to replicate the sense and feeling of this powerful little painting in the ones that followed. But I couldn't quite get it. It was always just beyond reach, like that feeling you get when something's on the tip of your tongue... That's pretty much painting all the time, actually. 

Anyway, after weeks and months of attempts, I now understand that the series of paintings that this one triggered has enabled greater progress, and more than simply getting stuck in the loop of trying to replicate a one-off.

It has enabled the repetition of an image (often reluctantly) or motif, and a focus on the simplification of how the paint goes onto the surface. THIS is what the paintings in this series are REALLY about: the HOW of painting, and the way the focus on this HOW can be hooked onto a simple motif, the 'Blue Mountains' of my mind.