The underwater world has always fascinated me, especially coral reefs, and I like mermaids. I began by making sketches then I got a model to help with the design of the human part of the figures. In my spare time I began to sift through hundreds of images using my computer to make prints of anything I thought was useful. Then I tried out various arrangements of fish. The coral details were put in last. Next time I’ll probably do it the other way round. The technique I use involves the use of ground colours and the build up of numerous glazes of oil paint. It’s my intention to achieve a sensation of very vibrant colour in deep space. Strong colour tends to flatten space so this a challenge. The final effect looks a bit like 3D. The colours are so optical they virtually glow in the dark.

This kind of painting is obviously very different to Impressionism or Post-Impressionism. Not that I’m knocking either of these styles. I enjoy painting from life and I admire artists who can catch a scene quickly by painting on the spot. However there are some subjects that can’t be painted from life and the world that exists under the waves is one of them. I enjoy painting detailed pictures and this obsession with detail has something in common with the works of Outsider artists. In terms of the history of art a love of ornament and artifice has always existed. Unfortunately we have lost a lot of this in our modern age. In a future blog post I will try to unravel the roots of this style war. Why is there a conflict between art and architecture that is essentially imaginative and organic and that which is largely functional?

Before long I will be offering approximately twenty-five of my pictures as high quality archival prints. These Fine Art prints are laid onto rag paper using pigmented inks. They are very beautiful and thanks to advances in technology they can now be produced at very reasonable prices. It will be possible to buy these images directly from my website so watch this space.

This painting is the product of countless hours of labour and numerous compositional strategies have been employed so that what you see now is a carefully considered distillation of an artificial reality. Hold on. I think I’m talking bollocks which reminds me of an interesting and amusing article I read recently called “Art Bollocks“, written by Brian Ashbee it first appeared in Art Review in 1999. Brian succinctly describes the realities of the contemporary art world and the all-pervading influence of Post-Modernism. Check it out, it’s not over-long and the section on how to talk ‘art bollocks’ is absolutely hilarious – art students take note, this is the kind of guff the tutors like to hear.

Post-Modernist ideas about art emerged out of the avant-garde in the 1960′s but what is Post-Modernism and where is it going? Back in 1917 Marcel Duchamp opened Pandora’s box when he signed a urinal R.Mutt and named it ‘Fountain’. This toilet and other mundane objects such as a bicycle wheel or a shovel became works of art because Duchamp said they were. He called them ‘Readymades’. Duchamp had a wicked sense of humour and one can’t help admiring his attempts to send-up the art world of his day. Since then the idea that an artist deals with reality itself has taken root and given birth to a new species of artist. Previously artists had painted, drawn and modelled objects of various kinds that were inspired by the external world transmuted through the artist’s consciousness in order to create a work of art. But now we have this new idea, an artist deals with and manipulates reality itself, as if he were a god. This means that there is no longer any way to define just what is and what isn’t a work of art. The old adage ‘a picture paints a thousand words’ has lost its relevance. Post-Modernist art needs to be written about and talked about otherwise it can’t be understood.

I wonder how a Post-Modernist artist would have treated the subject I have chosen for my painting?

Now I’ve got nothing against people doing eccentric things, in fact I’m all for it. However I do feel inclined to rail against the clique of artists that emerged in the 1990′s thanks to the patronage of Charles Saatchi. A bemused public has been told that an unmade bed or a cow set in formaldehyde constitute deep insights into the times in which we live. Do they believe it? No, like me the general public prefers figurative art. The truth is most people like looking at pictures and exhibitions of even minor artists from the past are always packed out. As I said I’m all in favour of eccentricity and if some individuals derive pleasure from Post-Modernist art then who cares? Let’s live and let live. But. Yes there’s always one of those; the trouble is a coterie of lightweight artists (whose work is vapid and tedious in the extreme) have  managed to collar most of the available funding. The current ‘Poplife’ exhibition is a good example of this. If Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Tracey Emin, Gavin Turk and the others are really among the most talented artists residing in the world today then later on this afternoon I’ll be having tea with a dormouse and a mad hatter.

Why can’t we have a serious exhibition, put on at public expense, of some of the best figurative art of the last twenty years?

I began by painting the abbey, I tried to make it look as if the river had burst its banks and then I added some graves and statues. I wanted to paint a place that looked as if it had been abandoned by humanity, a vision of a possible future when our world has fallen victim to some fierce weather conditions. In any case I love painting ruins and graveyards and I decided that this was going to be my ultimate cemetery painting. This picture is painted almost entirely from photographs. It couldn’t be done any other way as I have sifted through hundreds of images in order to find the material I need. As the painting developed the abbey began to recede and the viewpoint changed, I dropped the water level and added some geese and coots then I dropped the water level again as the foreground started to take shape.

I have always liked deep-toned paintings; certain pictures by Francis Danby spring to mind and then there’s Friedrich’s ‘The Abbey in the Oak Wood’, Miillais’s ‘The Haunted House’ and many others. Last summer I saw an exhibition at the National Gallery which really impressed me. It was called ‘Radical Light’ and it featured the paintings of a group of Italian artists called Divisionists. As this movement is spliced in between Symbolism and Futurism it has often been overlooked. Divisionist artists aimed to create the maximum intensity of light through the use of optical colour. I have painted many pictures with this intention in mind and seeing the show inspired me to rework the middle distance in my own painting.

I have devoted many hours to the creation of this picture and sometimes I ask myself the following questions. Why do I do it? What am I seeking to achieve and when is this project finally going to be finished? What is perfection? The answer to the last question is simple – there is no such thing. However artists must seek it because the attempt to do so vindicates one’s own life, it represents the search for an enlightenment of sorts. Visual Enlightenment, I like the sound of those words but what do they really mean?