Paintings, like people, go through rough patches. Many paintings, again like people, start off beautifully: all fresh, clear and focussed. Unfortunately the process of actually painting (deciding how something should look, the drawing and composition, paint applications, considering possible readings of the imagery) erodes this initial clarity, particularly during the mid stages of the painting, which is where this one is now. I think of it as being like a mid life crisis! There’s this nice initial burst of enthusiasm, and clarity, when you’ve had this great idea and just want to paint it. Then the process of actually making the thing takes its toll, and enthusiasm wanes (I once read a great definition of ‘character’, as in to show character. It was continuing to pursue a project long after the initial burst of enthusiasm fades). Towards the end of most paintings, fortunately, there’s often a feeling of synthesis, as if all the threads have come together. But I’m not there with this one yet.

The good news is that it now has a provisional title: it’s either The Tiger Bride or Tiger Bride. I’m a bit sick of putting ‘the’ in front of all my titles, makes the paintings sound like 60s supergroups, however if I leave the ‘the’ off, it reminds me of 90s bands (Blur, Oasis et al). I can’t win! The title came out of a misunderstanding with my Aunty Pam. She emailed me about the painting, and mistaking the girl’s white dress for a wedding gown, referred to it as the ‘tiger’s bride’. I think the phrase ‘delicate subjugation’, written on the canvas earlier in the piece, and the sweetness of the image, probably helped formulate a marital interpretation.

Speaking of sweet images, a friend recently described my imagery as being stuck somewhere between ‘heart warming and heart rending’. I thought this was a great observation, neatly encapsulating what I’m trying to do with them, this balance between sweetness and horror. They don’t work if they’re just pretty, they don’t work if they’re just angsty, they function if both these elements are somehow balanced. Despite the fact that I’m trying to rid myself of lingering romantic delusions about painting, I know they don’t work unless the emotional aspect is spot on. Essentially I need to feel the paintings very clearly and deeply to get them to work.

I remember sitting around with a group of painters once, this was years ago, we were talking about love and relationships. I remember one man told the story of love gone wrong, and the rest of us listened supportively, making sure our kind faces were in place (he was a good guy). There was a brief pause when he’d finished, then he commented, in a completely different kind of voice, ‘got some good paintings out of it though!’ This sudden light surge of amusement flashed through the room as everyone went ‘ah ha!’ and grinned at each other. Not sure if this says anything good about artists, I suspect not, but it was an entertaining moment.

Still buggering around with the technical aspects of this work, the bones, if you like. The rock wall ended up being at a much greater angle than I’d anticipated, partly as the result of working in a small studio, you can’t get back far enough to check for distortion. But although it’s technically wrong, I kind of like its wack job awkwardness, and the way it counterbalances the diagonal of the mountain range in the background. You keep looking at the painting because the diagonal of the wall is so unsettling, like the deck of a ship, visually people seek balance and symmetry.

If the wall was completely horizontal, it would ground the painting too much, turn it into a static image, and make the wall between wild landscape and figures seem like an overly rigid (visual) barrier. Thematically, the whole painting is about boundaries, between men and women, humans and animals, tame and wild, wilderness and garden. It’s got to be both accurate and wrong, this is not a good description, and I’m not even entirely sure what it means, but it’s what I’m aiming for.