This painting began with a figurative point of reference but follows the same pictopoietic pathway of previous paintings. Pictopiesis is not only applicable to non-objective painting. The first passage of paint is always a defining moment, it is the point of origin of the work, and always has its echo in the eventual outcome. This is the means by which I mean to state the common sense thread that the future is always a matter of the continuous past. To try and break from the past is false, it can’t be done. We are what we are. The painting is what it is, I am what I am.
I am interested in now reconnecting specifically with Six Persimmons, to see where it takes me. Though truthful to its origin the painting also has all the possibility of the open future within which to shape itself and be shaped. As is my usual way, I look at the painting in different orientations, communing with it afresh. The feeling of doing this is both disorientating and exciting. Regardless of which painting I am looking at at this stage, it is the excitement of considering all that might be, its potential.
The spell is broken when I have to decide on how to take it forward. Constantly reorientating the painting is a way of reinstating that feeling of its full potential. In the process I recenter myself, in the process I meet it again as if for the first time. The decision to not chose a particular orientation is as powerful as the decision to take a particular direction. Rationalising this involves instinct, intuition and experience.
