'On my easel' is a series of posts that I am adding to the Self-Isolation Residency Blog which will consider a current painting which is within days or sometimes hours of completion. This isn't quite the same as 'work in progress' as many of the pieces under consideration in this category may actually be complete already. These are generally going to be works which I am reflecting on for one reason or another and it is these needs for reflection which are preventing me from 'accepting' the work as complete.'

I have gone back to this painting, although I initally thought that it was nearly finished yesterday on reflection I realised that it had lost a lot ofthe sublty that I had intended for it to portray. I now do  belive that it is nearly complete, although the forground may need some extra work, as, obviously does the title, although I do also have some new thoughts about that subject to consider.

So I've been working on the forset triptych for some time and and on the whole I'm very happy with the way that it's progressing. However, mainly due to the thickness of the impasto, it is progressing rather slowly and so over the weekend I decided to start work on another piece on my second easel. This is a real contrast piece to the forest; the paint, although not quite washes is much thinner than the impasto of the forest. Also I am workingthis piece with brush whereas the forest is painted entirely with knife, the style ia actually quite a throw-back to paintings of my earlier career, although the palette is very different. . The sharp contrast of these two styles feels very appropriate to be being considered, side by side as I spend to much energy in reflection on my paintings.

As you are probably very aware, the time that I am spending working with this ... body of paintings is also allowing/encouraging me to play with all kinds of images and ideas. Part of this process has been considering 'details' of the works as potential images in their own right. Today's image continues the same idea but feels different. The image above is a detail of the top 1/5 of the current triptych but it also utilises the spaces in between them to create something new again. It's not the first time that the space between paintings has had an effect on my work: and I suspect it won't be the last time.