About This Project

If I paint pictures does that make me an artist? I honestly don’t know.
I do know there are times when, having started a painting, there comes a point when I don’t much like what I see before me on the canvas.
This is one of those paintings. There came a time when I lost the plot. I no longer knew why I’d chosen or even liked the images I was painting. It became a chore to finish. I fell out of love with it!
It’s a personal thing. We all loose our way at some time or another.
And because I construct and plan what I’m going to paint it becomes near impossible to de-construct the canvas and start over again. Maybe I should try abstract expressionism?
Then, out of the blue, came the ‘turning point.’ And the turning point was – clown fish.
All my paintings are uniquely personal statements. I‘m sure that’s true for every ‘picture maker.’
For example, the map behind the romanesque bust, is taken from a 1950’s map of North Wales and shows Wrexham the town where I was born.
And the textured background panel behind the toy motorcycle is taken from a photo I took of a sizeable boulder that was used as ‘set dressing’ (landscaping) around the first home I built in Australia.
I’ve stayed truthful to the original stone pattern but painted it with a more colourful turquoise hue. The toy motorcycle is just like one I had as a kid. The water-dragon (lizard chasing a housefly), which makes an appearance in this painting, I’ve used and written about in an earlier work (Life is Full of Surprises).
The rest are simply images that, for whatever reason, I liked at the time.
And then there are clown fish which, for me at the eleventh hour, became the missing ingredients that finally filled in the gaps and rescued the whole damn thing.
And therein lies the conundrum of painting pictures. Why do you choose to paint what you paint? And when it’s finished and the brushes are rinsed clean do you like what you see before you on the canvas?
And the answer is – sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. And that sums up perfectly why I’ve called this painting – ‘When There Is No Rhyme Nor Reason.’