I am glad these pictures bring joy to some people. They give me fun, sometimes shocking joy. But they are essentially accidents, gifts appearing from the hidden Giver of all good things.
When I try to be a painter in control, aiming to produce a work of art, to put on the board something I have cogitated, I mostly disappoint myself.
What I have to show these days comes by a different method.
When I get to the end of a session painting in acrylics, there are a few blobs of colour left standing on the palette, like workers in the market place at the last hour of the day, facing another wageless evening which tells them they are just Waste.
The vineyard owner comes and puts them to work – and it turns out they get as good or better a reward for their effort than those who have laboured all day to become part of a conventional proper painting.
I get the blobs of wasting paint on my knife, and play with it on any piece of discarded card that is to hand. The whole sheet is a shambles. Then I take my L-shaped pieces, and go over the mess framing various bits. When I find a rectangle that strikes me, I mark the corners and cut it out. A few are stunning. Most have some interest. All are accidents. Some are wholly abstract, simply colour and shapes resembling nothing. Others remind me of country roads, or mountains or water, Paul Nash war paintings or persons wandering or dancing in the trees.
The occasional intentional sketch intrudes itself, usually from many years ago.