SPRING 2026

I’ve thought about making my paintings very big like the Abstract expressionists, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko. I love their work.

Unlike theirs, my paintings are small. I think it’s right for what I’m trying to do. It makes the paintings intimate, human in scale rather than monumental. I want my paintings to be silent prayers rather than vast musical organ pieces. In any case I must be concerned with practicalities such as how would I move them from my studio to a gallery. How would I get a vast icon through a door, how would I store such big paintings in my studio between exhibitions?

Ever since I was an art student at Camberwell School of Art in the 1950’s I have struggled with the battle between order and abandon. Even before I was a student, as a very young child, I remember my parents gave me a colouring book. You know the sort, where you have to colour in the image that is printed in black outlines. I could never keep my colours within the outlines. I tried and failed. The colours escaped and became free. I created what my parents called a mess. Was it a lack of control or was it deliberate? I’m still having that same inner battle.

Every painting begins, like the colouring books, with constraints. The size of the work and its shape is the first constraint. Then the limit of the medium and the colours. Then the tools, brush or pallet knife, fingers, directly from the tube. How is the paint to be applied?

The constant battle goes on with each piece. How do I stay within the constraints and yet keep the painting energised and alive. How do I avoid the mess without shutting down the fire? How do I know when a painting is finished?

I think this piece below might be finished and will probably be in the exhibition. It’s small. 10 inches X 14 inches. That’s 254X355 millimetres, the opposite of Rothko or Newman. The title, New Series 24, is temporary.

I shall try to come up with another title that won’t direct the viewer into thinking that the title is a clue about what to see.

New series 24

We have had to change the date of my exhibition. It is now scheduled to be one year later. It will be from Wednesday 22^nd September 2027 until Tuesday 28^th September 2027 at the J/M Gallery, 230 Portobello Road, London.