As an artist, and particularly as an art tutor and lecturer, I have found myself over the years constantly telling students not to look at works of art in books, or in the 21st Century on the internet; which may seen a somewhat strange thing to say baring in mind that this post is about books.However, viewing a reproduced image, in whatever form, is never a substitute for seeing the actual 'object' itself; be that object a painting, a sculpture or a piece of architecture. There are no photographs that will truly allow you to understand how a Van Gogh brushstroke works, what the space inside Anish Kapoor's Ishi's Light in like or how feels to watch the sky through the roof of the British Museum's Great Court. All of these things have to be experienced in person and to do so we must travel.

When I was young I had very little opportunity to travel, but as my interest in art and culture grew so did my passion to experience the world first hand. And if I had ever needed to be convinced about the importance of traveling to experience an object Dan Cruickshank's enthusiastic and passionate writing in this book would have convinced me. For some the book could be seen as a 'list of 80 things to see before you die', but it is so much more. It's one man's "personal" journey to experience the world through these 80 objects. If I were to set out with a list of 80 objects to see I doubt that many of them would be the same as Cruickshank's 80,  but I would like to think that I would at least share the same joy of discovery as him.

"Staring out of the void." is the latest new painting in the 'Near Black series' painted on plywood block. This branch of the series successfully fuses my expressions of painting and art with my research into colour theory and the objecthood of a painting whilst continuing to reference my love of landscape as an expanded field.

I'm really pleased with the way that this painting has come together and for so many different reasons. First and foremost I am very pleased in the way that it succeeds as a painting. Only the day before this was already a relatively successful painting going by the working title of 'The King in Yellow'; it was the last painting that I had posted in the 'On My Easel' series. It was actually so successful at that stage that I almost left it as it was, even though it hadn't fulfilled it's original potential. So to have taken a successful piece of work and worked on it so much more, it is gratifying that I have in the end made it more successful.

This of course leads me onto the second reason that I am pleased with this piece, it once again validates the process behind the 'On My Easel' series. That reason being to give myself time and space to reflect upon a piece that is nearing completion but which still maintains some problematic characteristic for me to work through. Most often when a piece of work reaches this moment of refection there is very little, if anything that really needs to be done to complete it. Mainly this stage is used just to confirm to myself that I am right and that the piece really is completed. However, just once in a while a piece like this comes along which really validates the processes raison d'être. Returning this piece to the easel for more consideration reopened my working relationship with it in a very healthy way. Because the piece was already successful as a painting in it's own right I was very tempted to leave it at that point even though it did not fulfill my original plan for it. It is in the nature of art for work to evolve as you you upon it, this is a quite right and proper part of the creative process and any 'artist' who says that the final piece is exactly as they visualised it is either deluded or not really an artist at all. This piece is not as I originally exactly as I thought it would be, but by returning the piece to the easel for more reflection the processed I employed in completing it is far closer to my original plan and as these pieces owe so much to process that was very important.

The third and forth reason that I am pleased with this piece are tied so closely together that they are almost one reason, but I'll start with the third. The process which I had planned to use on this particular piece involved once again utilising my complete palette, Titanium White, Yellow Ochre, Alizarin Crimson and Prussian Blue, but in a way that I hadn't done it this series to date, although it was a process which I had successfully employed in other styles of painting. My plan for this piece was to introduce the Titanium White not in its pure form but in a mixture with Yellow Ochre. This mixture would be the final phase of the painting, which was the main reason to reconsider whether the piece was complete without this final phase. This mixture would be applied over layers of pure Yellow Ochre and Near Black in a process which I had successfully employed previously as part land/skyscape paintings to create wonderful 'depths' of skies and in this case voids. Illusions of painted depths have always been important in my work but they have perhaps gained a greater significance through this series, hence the use of directional or locational words like out, in, through and near in their titles.

The application of this final layer of paint has been really successful in the exact way that I hoped that it would be and has lead very directly to the final reason why I am so pleased with the piece. As I said I wanted to utilise this this previously employed method of painting skies in this piece and series, but in a way in has gone full circle because it has lead me back to a new potential direction to experiment with in related to both this and a previous series of works. I won't say any more at this stage as I am only beginning to formulate the ideas in my own head, watch this space for the evolution of the those ideas.