Despite interruptions for really serious matters such as Test Match days at Lord’s (non-cricketing readers can ignore that clause), I’ve continued painting and not blogging during the second half of May, recognising that I’ve been lucky enough to hit a ‘purple patch’ when ideas flow from the head and images flow from the brush (well, palette knife actually, since I don’t often use a brush), and all I want to do is paint. I know that one is supposed to knuckle down and put in a disciplined artistic stint each day, and I’ve no doubt I would benefit from such a regime, but in practice I don’t work that way. I know other artists, whatever their regime, also blow hot and cold, have good periods, uninspired phases, and I accept that one has to plug on whether on song or not; but it is nevertheless a great feeling when the muse visits, and even better when you can look back at the results of such a visitation and see that they are not at all bad.

Now I have the pleasure and the challenge of two big ‘canvases’ to work on during June – ‘big’ by my standards is a metre square or thereabouts. One is a new painting envisaged as ‘Becker country’, of which more anon, being created on the surface of heavy plywood formerly bearing ‘Ard-scene’ (see The Gallery) which I found to be damaged beyond repair when I hauled it out of storage; the other is a complete re-working of what I thought was a completed painting of a landscape with megaliths. The megaliths have to go! – watch this space, more specifically the spaces where they were. They are to be replaced by Sizewell A and B, nuclear power stations on the Suffolk coast. Who knows whether this is not a like-for-like replacement?

If there is another gap before I blog again, I’m painting – please do not disturb!