Painting Autumn

You know what it's like: you keep walking past something and gradually it worms it's way into your head. Like Alice, you expect to find a note on it that says 'paint me'; so that's what happened with this work. I don't suppose it will surprise anyone if I say that it's near the river! It's a hedgerow along Remenham Lane - the sort of thing that yields blackberries and, very close to this bit, sloes.

I took a couple of pictures of it and then retired to the flat to have a think. There seemed to be plenty of colour in it and that gave me the possibility of perhaps approaching it in a slightly different fashion from how I would usually paint. It ended up being very different! Somewhere during the painting of it I found that I had started applying some of the colour unmixed and straight from the tube. For me, this a bold step. I don't think it represents a great revolution but at the same time, I'm working on another picture which looks far more like my usual output. I see no reason not to tailor my approach picture by picture but I think I learned from the experience and it was fun! The first couple of piccies are close-ups; the final one is the finished picture.