The previous painting was the departure I was looking for, this painting pushes me further in that direction. With a low boredom threshold the notion of being a ‘landscape painter’ was a straight jacket of my own making. I have realised that what I need is a great deal of uncertainty in my work, both in terms of subject and my treatment of it. The image for this painting was not premeditated. I photographed it from the tv screen, it was the opening scene of a random YouTube video. What struck me about it was the idea of someone getting a simple pleasure from fishing in isolation, in the middle of winter, sat on a muddy canal bank in the cold. The photo is so bad that areas of the figure are very uncertain, as are some areas of the scene, but there are some beautiful effects of trees and reflection in the cold murky green/grey water. Just to the left of the figure is, I think, a canal bridge, and there seems to be a ‘double rainbow’ effect of the bridge caused by distortion of the photo and other objects that are either trees or man made structures. There is an atmosphere of a magical realism, not quite Daliesque, thankfully.
Fishing for roach. Day 1