FAQ's

1. Why Saints Days?
I have often been asked about this in relation to the naming of paintings: are there symbolic, narrative or hagiographical references underlying any of the choices made in developing paintings? To which the answer is no.

In 1999 I first recognised and then developed a tendency to go out and “look for” paintings at times of festivals or seasonal turning points. One of these trips was to be on Hallowe’en. It rained so I went the next day: first of November, All Saints Day. Now I look up the Saint on the date whenever something about a painting comes into being either from studies or photographs, or just from walking, standing and looking and that gives me my title.

I like the idea that there is an ordering of time which adds a dimension of celebratory and spiritual significance to the listing of days and months, and this seems in a way comparable to some of my more unrealisable ambitions for the ordering of place in landscape depiction.

2. Why Gridlines
I use grids as many other artists have done, to re-scale and transfer imagery, but also to stretch or condense, to transform proportions and areas. So the grid becomes another active agent in design.

The choice to leave gridlines visible in parts is to acknowledge the role of design – of conscious manipulation alongside that of observation. This for me parallels the role of design – of control and development through time – in shaping the landscape.

There is also an analogy with the device of mapping, and maps as coded representations of landscape and so to landscape depiction as a coded representation of the mind.