Went to The Cut at Halesworth yesterday morning to collect from the exhibition any paintings of mine that might possibly remain unsold. I had taken three there in early December; need I say that I brought three back?

I wreaked my revenge, bully-like, on the smallest: that small blue abstract (‘Marina’, illustrated 5 December) is now much changed by angry additions in red, Prussian blue and yellow, colours from whatever tubes of paint happened to be on the desk, squeezed on to its blameless canvas as soon as it entered the studio. The marina looks as if a storm has passed through.

 

This studio-snap shows it upside down from the way it was exhibited at Halesworth; but at the moment it has neither clear top nor bottom. Whether this is an improvement or not, clearly it is now not finished; but at least I now have something to work on, something a bit gutsy. Strange to think that until 6 weeks ago this was a gentle abstract evolved from a figurative drawing of Michael’s studio. We’ll see where we go from here.

 

Then – I could not believe it. There in the Guardian was my thin blue line: the Old Mill House at Aldeburgh is for sale. A photograph accompanying the advert showed the dome-topped old mill tower at the extreme south end of the town by the large car-park. It sits just above the beach, separated from the shingle by the revetted sea wall, along the top of which was – of course – the same blue line on its northern projection that we have already noted, photographed and painted at its southern end beside the Martello tower.

Moved by this co-incidence, I turned to work for a few minutes on my painting called ‘The Blue Line’ (see blog for 30 Dec) and moved it on significantly towards completion. In a studio-shot, it now looks like this:

 

Apart from a bit of tidying up, this may be it. We’ll let it cook for as long as it takes. But what a contrast: (ex)Marina above was started months ago and I’ve still not idea where it is going to end up; while ‘The Blue Line’ was started only days ago and is now not going to change significantly in appearance.

Funny thing, painting.