The life of a painter is, in large part, a sustained engagement with failure. Not failure in the sense of defeat, but failure in the sense of falling short of what one intended — of making something that is less than what one hoped for, and then returning to the studio to try again. This is not a discouraging observation; it is, I think, the condition that makes the work possible. If painting were easy, it would not be worth doing. The Aesthetic Journey The aesthetic journey

Fields, Rivers and Dreams — The Fenland Landscape from Above Seen from above, the Cambridgeshire Fenlands reveal a geometry that is invisible at ground level. The dykes and drains run in straight lines across the flat terrain, dividing the land into rectangles and parallelograms of varying colour and texture. The rivers wind between them, their curves a counterpoint to the rigidity of the drainage system. From the air, the Fens look like a vast, abstract painting — a composit