Fired Earth Painting

I build up my paintings slowly over time, layer by layer. Using my long-established process, I apply a coat of oil paint then scrape passages away to create an interplay of dappled colours and then continue adding more paint mixed with resin building up an image. My ideas are to create an image based on chance. Physically, I use painting tools which limit my control of the medium. By using scrappers and household brushes, a random selection of marks emerge, including broad patches of colour. I then use a squeegee and wipe is across the image with a diluted oil mix. It creates distinctive variety of marks and broad patches of colour. I don’t have a specific picture in mind when I start. I like the fact that it is not planned. The method of random choice and chance, its build-up and destruction produces an abstract image but never a pre-determined one. The process takes a long time and many different images appear on the canvas and it is only at the end, when the final image crystallises, that I am satisfied with the painting.