by my absence. This may upset most people, but if your wanting to slip away to your studio when you have your mother and in-laws over from Mexico, it is a positive benefit. I managed to get in an afternoons painting and on returning to the house I was expecting some kind of negative reaction. I was welcomed back as if nothing had happened, there are upsides to being dull and uninteresting. This painting is finished. I think it is the first painting that has enabled me to break away from my familiar style of landscape painting. Although I will come back occasionally to a ‘traditional landscape’ I want to move further away from that format and I have something in mind.
The farmhouse