What Was It You Wanted?

In the meantime, it was great to get back to work today (not my lecturing job which also started back on Monday, but back in the studio). You may recall that before my trip to Scandinavia I spent a few days preparing a few big canvasses to attempt a run of paintings before I went. Well, that never occurred, but on my return, as my head cleared from thoughts of my travels I remembered that these would still be waiting for me. Today then was spent working on this large painting, which is the next in my series of motorway nocturnes. I have two or three more planned which I then envisage being the end of this particular series for now, before exploring some of my Scandinavian work.

I had a really intense time with this painting, which was great fun, but I felt I was walking on a tightrope throughout as it was largely improvised around a very basic structure. One mark seemed to take it one way, the next mark somewhere else and on and on. I’d made a similar painting last year which I was pleased with, and have been keen to extend some of the ideas onto a bigger scale since. I got to a point where I felt it was finished, but also where I just needed to walk away and see it with fresh eyes later. When discussing it with Diane, my wife in the evening, we both decided that the spatial interplay between the suggestion of flatness and depth needed pushing further with some darker tones.