Curator Statement

This painting I’d been working on for a long time and it was one of the first big pictures I did when I was down in the Cabin beside Chinamans Beach. Right up til almost the last minute it was going to be called Painting on a Monday, because that’s what I was doing, that’s how I wanted to start my week even though at this time I was still needing to make some money as a designer and as an Art Director. I used to start every week by painting, I’d go down to the Cabin studio by myself, set the paints up and start to paint. This particular picture was about the fact that often on grey, wintery days, you’d see the fishermen come along and the seagulls on the edge of the beach and a few kind of quiet boats there. But on the right hand side, that’s me in the studio there, and if you look up right hand corner you’ll find the telephone ringing because people were still kind of interrupting me, you’ll see all the paint laid out in front of the pallet with me starting to work but in a sense there’s no painting there, the painting is still out the window and my hands are clasped above my head and you see, there’s really no fingers there at all. This painting was as much about the frustration of painting and trying to get things right and as I said at the start, when I started this painting it was going to be called Painting on a Monday, and I realised at the last minute it wasn’t good enough so I scratched it out and put Trying to paint on a Monday. But in a sense no matter how proficient an artist might become in his life, he or she is always trying to paint, there is always further to go.