The Times They Are A-Changin'

Corridor 1990 (Watersoluble marker in A5 sketchbook)

A month is a long time in the Blogosphere. If that isn't a famous quote, it ought to be. It's just over a month since I posted anything here; I feel I should act before the inertia really builds up and starting again becomes a chore. I'd hate to think you'd all given up and gone for good.

Hello? Hell - ooo?!!

There's a reason for the pause in my blogging, one that's relevant to the pause in my painting too (for the pause has manifested itself there as well), but it's one that I'm only now coming to terms with.

I turned 65 at the end of January and became the grateful recipient of a State Retirement Pension. Suddenly, I'd come out of a long dark tunnel and a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders. For the last ten years I've been beavering away trying to earn a crust from my work and now, well, I don't have to. I've never painted anything I didn't really want to paint, but there was always the thought at the back of my mind that I needed to sell it.

And now that thought has evaporated. I can do whatever I like, including doing nothing. which is rather what I've been doing for the last month, at least in terms of making art. I have been visiting friends, I have been entertaining friends who paid a return visit; and I have been seeing exhibitions, most notably the wonderful David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture at the Royal Academy in London.

But now I feel it's time to get back in the studio and make art again. There's another Figure8 show coming up, and I may want to do something new for it (or I may not - the power of the new freedom!). The great thing about how I am now is that I can do anything and everything, without considering the consequences.

But there are a couple of paintings I think should be finsihed before I launch into anything fresh. So watch this space. Oh go on. Just to please me.