Interpretation versus taste

Taste and prejudice are the enemies of creativity. As a painter I can't afford to 'hate' any colour or my options are limited. Through the act of painting, new horizons open and we follow where they lead, without self editing. The worst thing is when someone says 'I prefer it when you paint trees,' or 'Your flower paintings were so good.' Other people's interpretation of what you do grows from many sources, some relevant, some not, but how crushing it is when someone blocks the flow with a random remark. I've known painters who couldn't paint for days.

Recently an art agent collected 11 canvases for a show. I thought a lot afterwards about how others look at my work once it has (hopefully) become a separate world. Always there is the fear of how one's work will be interpreted - and of course, maybe I am deluded and in a creative cul-de-sac without realising it! (The fact that it is not an exact science leads me to many wobbly moments.) What amazed me was that she selected what I considered to be one of my worst paintings ever. ('Puddles in the Park.') I wondered what she had seen in it that I was unable to connect with, because of the tangle of aesthetic and technical questions in my mind.

I had deliberately used shapes and colours that challenged my visual comfort zone, and had been unable to unify them. I let the painting go for exhibition as perhaps when it re-enters the studio, it will need just a tweak here and there.

One of the exciting and eternally challenging aspects of painting is that there is no set viewpoint, no one way or fixed interpretation. But artists tread a fine line between listening, and closing our ears to unproductive interpretations when working.

Then there are the demands and evaluations of the market, but that's another post!

('Puddles in the Park,' oil on canvas 50cm by 70cm. 'Coastal Landscape,' oil on board 12ins by 24ins)

Travel

As 2010 ticked into 2011, I was standing watching the fireworks in Nicosia, Cyprus, with my partner. As the fireworks exploded, and cascades of fiery stars fell through the darkness, I cheered loudly with the crowds. Faces shone with the universal hope a New Year always brings.

A few days later, after numerous walks through sunlit parks glowing with the artificial greens that unfold at that time of year, I was yearning to paint. I wrote this in my diary:

'Images are struggling to get out, beating against closed eyelids: when I close my eyes they flit across my inner vision, they seep into dreams, they burst out from behind and between leaves and concrete as I walk, they float up from the sweet earth and sing from the trickling river. I smell them as I pass rainbow flowers, and hear them bubbling behind apocalyptic clouds strewn with grey streamers. Vision and experience cross over into one another, they mutate into something new and bright. I sense the life forces between things, and feel the energies. The problem is to find the right form of expression and this takes time, focus and integrity. I don't want to follow trends or adapt my work for commercial reasons. It has to be pure, at the 'risk' of never making it in the 'real' world.'

('Out of the Loop,' watercolour, 16ins x 12ins, painted in Nicosia.)