The Painting Diary

I called this latest series of paintings The Painting Diary because it forms a kind of journal, a regular practice for me, alongside the continuing Daedalus Atelier series. I have been intrigued by bowls for many years and have made many drawings of bowls and this is a return to painting them after a gap, since the Interior series in 1996 (shown at Fassbender Gallery, Chicago).

The motif derives from many years of exploring churches and museums, absorbing the in-built hush and sense of contemplation, of continuity. One of the oldest artefacts in a church, often predating the building, is the font. And bowls are found in museums obscure and famous, across all cultures. This ancient shape — the bowl — is significant in everyone’s life, as a receptacle or as a boat. Such a simple form, yet complex in its simplicity. It’s a magical idea that a bowl can contain water and yet also, as a vessel, travel across water.