'Crispy Realisation...'

I went for a walk in the Wyre Forest today with my wife, Diane and our son, Isaac. Despite the rain, it was great to get out. We all love the outdoors. I was glad of the opportunity to clear my head, after an intense day painting yesterday amongst the turps, linseed and oil paint of the studio. I completed a new portrait, ‘Rayhana’, that is a follow on from the previous one, ‘Safeera’. Again it depicts a young Muslim woman, and was an attempt to develop the formal ideas explored in ‘Safeera’. I’m going to try and develop these into a bigger, more unified, series over the next few months. This is something I haven’t done in a long time. The next painting won’t be part of this though. I’ve got something else in mind based on some mono and relief prints I’ve been playing around with in the evenings this week.

‘Crispy Realisation’ is a line that comes from one of the songs on Bon Iver’s ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’, which I've obsessively played in the studio for over a year now at the start of a day’s work. I love it, and that phrase jumped out and stuck in my head yesterday. I also listened to Bob Dylan’s ‘Blood On The Tracks’, which must be one of the greatest collection of songs ever recorded. I’ve previously blogged about rituals and superstitions, and yesterday when listening to this I was reminded how a few years ago I painted a series of ten portraits where I found myself ritualistically playing this album at the start of each painting session. It was the start of a much deeper relationship with Bob’s music, that I’ll probably blog about more at some point. I’ve spared you this so far…