Where does great painting come from?

When my Father left the subsistence shores of Ireland at the age of 16, he landed in London looking for work. He spent his days working in vast demolition sites like Battersea Power Station (covered in asbestos) and his nights sleeping in plain sight of boarding house signs that read "No Blacks. No Irish. No Dogs." It is hard for me to imagine what he felt about such open hatred for all things 'alien.' But then I think about the way he brought me up to consider that disliking people you don't know is never an option. He worked to win people over with a quiet determination that puts my habitually griping generation to shame. No matter how wronged my Father had been, he never had a bad word to say about anyone. Not  a bad way of looking at life. My own son has gone on to be a philosopher and a cage fighter. The roots of his genetic predisposition to the engineering of thought and mixed martial arts are well founded in my Father's modus operandi: go quietly about your work with a view to doing that which must be done well and, very, very quietly and despite the glare of publicity... remove anything that gets in your way with a quiet word or a very solid right hook. My Father was like the tide in Dungarvan Harbour (pictured above) at the very moment the tide was in and before it went out. He had a stillness about him that made light of the deep tidal forces surrounding any given moment in time. I have always admired his easy stoicism. It is something I am going to try and capture in a new series of paintings based around the places he lived and worked in all his life from Dungarvan to London and back again. Along the way, I hope to find out where great painting comes from. I am sure that no matter where you are, no matter what you paint - it's putting something of what's inside your heart onto the canvas that counts. And when I think of my Father the tide of thoughts, impressions and memories start pouring out. It's like open heart surgery with a brush and I am left with a single thought,"I hope I can do him justice."