Something

I've started to destroy the paintings by working quite physically with oil and a palette knife in the backgrounds, strengthening the background colour and creating a much more dynamic surface in the process.  I think that i've been too tentative with these images and that is why I have not been happy with them.  So much in the past has been about gestural painting becoming more refined into figuration, that there needs to be some kind of destructive action as a counterpoint to the much tighter figuration.  So much of these paintings start out as measured analytic drawings that there has be be something beyond filling them in to make them exciting. I think i'm getting somewhere with these images, a combination of precision and that materiality that I so long for in painting.