This is now what is on top of

 

 

This new image, which just appeared over a brief two hours yesterday and the day before, does not feature in my earlier blog showing work in progress during February. Yet although it seems to have come from nowhere, I realise already as I look at it hanging on the spare bedroom wall that it comes out of the deeply wintery weather of snow and bitter, strong east wind which we have suffered in recent days. And it is weather that must have seered its way into my subconscious because I had to be out in it attending to ‘my’ flock of rare breed sheep.

I did not set out to paint a snow-scene-type picture but I did set out to paint something, whatever it turned out to be, in my ‘new wispy landscape’ style. The recent weather, plus the very whiteness of the gesso-ed surface, melded with this intention, I suppose, to produce this cold and rather spare white landscape image. Familiar elements are there, such as an Avebury-style megalith, long and round barrows, a church, and a sailing boat, but they are almost incidental to the bleak intent.