Like Painting with Centre Heart Form, Painting with Yellow Field also began with a suggestion of a garden. Two fully crowned tree forms stretched from its base to its upper limit. Together with the negative shape between them they also suggested a kind of temple with pillars and arches. Traces of these forms can still be seen. But it wasn't possible to for them to stay; they were broken down and a problematic journey unfolded, so complex that it was difficult to see a way through. Eventually I was able to take a brush loaded with quite liquid yellow paint and work across the painting, from top to bottom and from left to right, burying much of what had gone before and leaving fragments, which formed the basis for something new. I am invariably apprehensive about giving anything up, but having done so, seldom regret having taken the risk. With this piece it led to something totally surprising. Something of an over-arching form remains top left. Below this is a vague suggestion of two long necked birds, one stretching up, the other down. There are complex intertwining configurations, again, suggesting alternative routes, and a blue triangular flag.
There is something about the laying on of paint - the deposition, the drawing across, the degree of saturation, the point at which the stroke breaks up to reveal what is underneath, like a veil, or the point at which the fluid paint gathers and bleeds. There are certain connections with the process of writing - the direction, the horizontality, and the way it creates a weave, and a text. Up close, a surface detail can be very enticing, but it's only from a distance that the bigger relationships can be seen. There is a rhythm in this too - the stepping back, the seeing, and the moving forward, and even the way I am drawn to this brush or that, to one colour or another. An image builds up on the surface, but in a way everything is just the remains of a process.
In a letter, Mel Gooding, the art critic and writer, described this process in my painting as 'catching thought (visual thought) on the wing'. He also referred to the way 'visual brakes' appear in some of the paintings. This is certainly the case with Painting with Triangular Return. The white horizontal in the centre suggests a strong lateral movement and the short verticals at either end act as brakes or stops. The dark band above this is held in its tracks before being whipped up and back. Something of this force is then conducted across and down to the foot of the painting, but some of it appears to remain in the higher reaches. The left to right movement is emphasised too by the unusual circle, which 'rolls off' the left hand edge. The whole thing reminds me of a 'rotatrim' used for cutting paper, with its action, circular blade and stops, or the back and forwards movement of the mechanism inside a computer printer. The grey triangular form right of centre, suggest a cutting blade, as to some extent do the small sloping rectangular elements to the left - so there is curious connection with the tools of the trade. The grey triangle mentioned can also be seen as the head of a dog-like form, which in turn reminds me of animal motifs found in Egyptian hieroglyphics. In an old Persian rug in my home, similar figurative motifs, but of birds and flowers, form part of a representation of a garden.
There are a number of semi-figurative elements in Painting with Sliding Blue. It was around this time that I visited the Paul Klee Exhibition at the Hayward Gallery; something of his poetic spirit seems evident in this piece. I was also looking more closely at the Persian rug mentioned above - the borders, zones and motifs; some of the colours are also very similar. The central triangular forms suggest mountains or pyramids - heavy at their base but pointing upwards. Two semi-figurative forms below these shapes appear to be dragged into the painting by some force that is beyond their control. An ambiguous club form or tree motif appears centre right, and the colour of this is echoed in the rich, but heavy, deep yellow band held below the uppermost realms. A figure appears confined within this zone, looking down, alongside a blood orange sun, low on the horizon. It was painted over Christmas. From such an evocative description it may seem as if it could only be painted through some pre-conceived notion as to its content. In fact my attention tends to be focussed on the painting process and on the state of the painting at any given stage. The rest is found along the way, or emerges indirectly.
There is a strong horizontal application again in Painting with Pale Blue. For some reason, while painting it I was reminded of San Francisco where we bought Diebenkorn's 'Black Club'. Maybe there was something about the way the train meandered its way into the stat ion, or the way the roads rise in steps to the upper districts. The blue also suggests a kind of still centre surrounded by a busy complex of routes and junctions. The pink horizontals are on a different level, somewhat separated from that which is below. I was also looking again at the earlier paintings of Howard Hodgkin, where unlikely forms and compositions result from a process of layering and over-painting.