Blank Canvas

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The last signed and dated piece of artwork I made was in 1989, part of a series of pieces centred around the singer Hank Williams. Most of the pieces are lost, but the triptych of Hanks is still with me, alongside a number of screen prints that never got framed nor saw the light of day, let alone got hung. I did start painting again for a while around ten or so years ago, but the thread of inspiration dried up as quickly as it had arrived. I decided the other day that enough was enough: I'd start working again, and the above will be the genesis of some new series of paintings. As you can see, the base for this will be small: a six-by-six inch canvas [still in its shrink-wrap here], held by the miniature oak studio easel that my dad made many years ago to hold my parents' wedding album on the occasion of their golden wedding anniversary. The canvas is one that Ray Keats left behind when she died a couple of years ago; I have several now to get me started. I've determined to go back to where I began: the piece that got me into art college in the first place, which was similarly small, but which packed the density of content of a large Abstract Expressionist painting - read any Robert Rauschenberg: still a hero of mine, long dead though both he and his oevre are - into a very portable, portfolio-friendly piece. I've got a plan in mind for these new works, so I'll keep you posted as and when stuff happens. By the way, I still don't agree with the critical thread that lumps Rauschenberg [or Jasper Johns for that matter] into the blanket category of American Abstract Expressionism. Thank you not, Clement Greenberg...

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