An interesting thing I've noticed recently is that when I put up 'older' paintings (2017-2018) for instance, on Instagram or Facebook, viewers react almost like they've never seen them before. But to be fair, back then, even just three years ago, I didn't have a lot of viewers.
But what is interesting for me, is that these little studies still 'hold up', that is to say, they still look fresh to me, and to others too. This is a good sign and it speaks well for one's work although these are by no means great,,,, good maybe,,, and interesting at the very least, but not great, just decent enough to stand up against Time. They are too small to be considered great (if indeed, they are even any good at all) because, it seems to me that only more substantial sized works of art can truly be considered 'great'. There are exceptions when one thinks of poetry perhaps, or even some short stories. But still,,, Tolstoy's superb novella, The Forged Coupon, will always be eclipsed by his grandly great and epic novel Anna Karenina.
But anyway, during these years 2017-2019, I was still coming out of my 'Expressionist' period for lack of a better term, which essentially meant spending most of my time in the studio where the use of my eyes was memory-based as opposed to being out in front of a motif in the wilds of Nature. And at this time I was also only beginning to 're-learn' how 'to see' again, 'to respond' again to this changing colour wheel of a motif at dusk.
But in any event, I still like the 'hybrid nature' of these studies for they seem to reveal a confusion in this Painter's mind by the fluctuations of past memory to the present sensations.
What some viewers don't always get is that these things are often crudely put together because they are rapid and spontaneous collisions of pigment under the colourful constraints of a changing set of elements. This is where the collective memory of everything I've loved in Painting now fuses with what goes on out under the twilight sky. If these studies fail it is because they slip off the delicate knife-edge that separates 'realism' and 'fantasy'.
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