I met a man whose two boys wanted their brown-paper kites painted before flying them. Afterwards, the man said, why don’t you paint a proper picture? I had never painted anything before but the idea resonated, as if I’d been doing it for years. I knew instinctively what to do, without reference to any art. I wanted to paint a London market so I took some photos, too embarrassed to stand and sketch since I didn’t know if I could sketch. I observed the people, their relationships and activities, the shapes they formed, the colours etc, the knowledge they allowed me of themselves. That’s something I’ve always done for I love the formations that people make as they move to and fro in a crowd, the rhythms and interlace, how our inner lives are expressed outwardly.
I knew I wanted to paint straight onto wood so I would have to whitewash it. It would have to be right the first time, not reworked, because the energy of first time lines is fresh and alive, suggesting movement. I plotted the basic composition on paper quarter size, then gridded it onto the wooden board, adding and connecting the details, noisy areas and quiet areas, full of colour and drained of colour, the yielding contours of bodies and the rigid lines of buildings, the street receding and the sky advancing, the central hook of the street lamp with the tramp at its base. I didn’t know much about mixing paint or techniques. But I wanted the picture to tell its story in the lines and colours and shapes and I didn’t want it framed, but simple and direct in every sense, so that the viewer is not observing it as through a window passively, but actively engaging with it.
Afterwards the man said, why don’t you enter it in this national competition? So I did, transporting it on my head, 4ft by 3ft, through the London streets. The people receiving entries smiled with amusement when they saw it and I smiled back in acquiescence, for my painting did seem childish compared to the others. Sometime later they contacted me as one of those chosen to be exhibited at the Royal Festival Hall in central London. We went up to see it hanging with the other 200 exhibits chosen from thousands, and to wonder at the absurdity of it all. People wanted to buy it but I don’t sell. The man died of a heart attack years ago though he is immortalised here, walking in the street.
That’s how my plain paintings began and the method hasn’t really changed since that day when it discovered itself, fully formed. I have just become more conscious of it all.
This is the latest painting completed this February 2009. It’s called “Hide and Seek"
