Here is another pit-stop painting - pit-stop meaning done quickly
on a piece of ply board I’d sawn from a bigger sheet. I like doing quick knife
paintings so I pulled out my paint drawer in my bedroom, carried it downstairs
into the lounge and got started. It was about 7pm.
The
scene is a field in Lincolnshire. I’d been driving through the countryside to
look for a graveyard and, having got lost, pulled over for a frothy coffee and
a slice of peanut butter on toast. I got out and was glad to hear little but birdsong.
Flat fields ran in every direction and I immediately took a liking a solitary tree
at the far end of one of them. Had it survived centuries when others hadn't? Had
there once been an avenue of them to act as a windbreak? I don't know but I took
a photograph of it anyway. I didn't think I'd commit it onto a bit of A4-sized
wood one day but here it is....well, a version of it anyway.
I
thought I’d give myself a time limit and as I was watching Game On - a favourite sitcom series from the nineties - I thought
“That’s it - ninety minutes. I’ll give myself ninety minutes.” I'm not sure
which came first - the end of ninety minutes or the evening’s darkness. Anyway it
was too dark to see clearly. I put the knives and brushes in a bowl of warm
water while I waited for some bread in the toaster. Looking again at the
painting while eating jam on toast I thought the clouds needed adjusting and
did that the next day in daylight. It's a bit basic - I should have put a
scarecrow or combined harvester in the field but it's finished and varnished
now. I enjoyed doing it - William Shakespeare was right when he said,
"Things won are done, joy's soul lies in the doing."
You
could hang this painting in your library and if guests asked who did it your
could say your son/daughter did it when they were six years old. Six is a nice
round number so this baby is yours for £6,000 (frame and postage are free.)
Sky on in a minute or two...