This is obviously an old-style Fowler painting, reverting to a familiar ‘megalithic’ topic and thick-oil technique; but back in October, after experimenting a lot with ink-washes and new styles, I suddenly felt an irresistible desire to produce a blue painting. This, eventually, was the result, but it came to look like this by a tortuous route.

In part this was because the ‘blue’ painting was on top of a basically brown and green painting of a ruinous windmill at Stukey, Norfolk, in the garden of a house I rented there for a family holiday some years ago; and I tried in vain to keep some ‘good bits’ from this earlier painting in this new one. In the end, the small brown patch is the only remnant in a sea of some five or six different blues in thick oil.

In one sense this is an unusual painting for me because it carries no particular meaning. It is simply a composition in blue using elements – upright stones loosely derived from Avebury – arranged with one behind the other to give a 3D effect. I sometimes wonder if the white rectangle in or on the front stone is a mirror reflecting the present or a window looking into a blank past.

The painting has been submitted for the open exhibition at The Cut, Halesworth, Dec. ’17 – Jan. ’18.