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."

Is this a paint brush I see before me?

It has been so long since I picked up a brush and put my heart and soul into a painting. That doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about it. Far from it: I still wake up most mornings reaching for one of my many notebooks. I have a collection of stuffed folios and pads that goes back 20+ years. I am sure most of my good stuff is in there just waiting for my psychologist daughter to go rooting around when I have returned, in kind, to that great big metaphysical canvas know as the Universe. We are here for so little time that we find ourselves distracted from the thing we love by the need to earn a living. Star Trek has it right: you can't explore the infinite when you are stuck in the here and now of everyday existence. Time, then, to pick up my brush again and go boldly where I have been before and long to be again. A blank canvas; a brush (or 40); a shelf full of acrylic paint and only the vaguest of ideas where the first line will take me. To all those who dare to call themselves "Artist" I offer my thanks for making the Universe a better place.

It's been a while. I've been taking a long hard look at the various strands of my creative life and trying to put some order into the chaos. I've tried everything including having no system at all and just dealing with whatever comes most urgently to my attention. After all, John Lennon once mused that "Life is what happens while you're doing something else." I have come to the conclusion that the Buddhists have it right: "Life is what you choose to pay attention to." To that end, I have sorted out a system that allows to me to keep track of everything from my lecturing, art, framing and consulting businesses via a combination of daily mind maps working on conjunction with Omnifocus. I can capture all the information, process and act upon it without having to keep all of it in my head. I have cleared out the desk clutter, in-tray stockpiles and email backlogs. Sorted all the project files into folders and archived everything that isn't required for front of mind actions. In short, I have created peace of mind amid the whirlwind of immediate actions, mid-term projects and long term fantasies. My whole life is ordered into 3 main folders: Now. Next and Nuts. Each has subsections for the four working and one personal contexts. Fingers crossed. What Now?...Billing. What Next?...new business in Poland. What Nuts? I'm not ready to tell!

Maidenhead Art on the Street

Art on the Street was brilliant. A whole two days of mixing with over 1oo other artists from the surrounding area and as far afield as Amsterdam and Australia. Blazing sunshine on day one and constant rain on day two. All the while, the company of some amazingly talented artists and hundreds of people who took time out of shopping trips and Cup Final TV to talk art and business. Can't wait for the next one. My thanks to the amazing ladies from Boville Wright Art shop for organising such a great event.

Some places you never forget

This is my impression of Ballydwan Cove in Ireland. You reach the single beach via a rock-strewn gap in the cliff face and can find yourself trapped between the crumbling rockface and the pounding waves. The whole bay is a horseshoe amphitheatre for sound and movement. Some days the fog stays trapped on the shingle and you can't see anything but the innermost waves. On other days, the sun flays through the fog to reveal the hitherto latent white horses that ceaselessly race each other across the rough and tumble wave tops. Your eyes and ears have nowhere to rest. You cannot escape the feeling of energy all about you. It is palpable, visceral and always intimidating. Now you understand how the gap in the towering cliffs was made: the sun and the sea are simply irresistible. They work without pause for breath, wielding cosmic and global forces we can't even begin to comprehend. If I painted here all day and night for the rest of my life, it would never be the same from one moment to the next. Such is the power of Ballydwan Cove.

There's no place like home

While heading off into London to exhibit my work to a wider audience makes sense from a financial perspective, putting your art out into the local community helps you feel part of something bigger: raising the creative and cultural profile of Maidenhead, the place I call home. So many of us living in Maidenhead, for obvious reasons, are so focused on London as the place where we work and play that we forget about what is on our own doorstep. The Norden Farm Centre for the Arts is a place where we artists, of all kinds, get to show our work while others get a chance to play and be amazed, amused and entertained. Take a look at the what's on section of their website and you will see the most extraordinary collection of live shows, films, classes, workshops and exhibitions. Who knows, you might even get to see my latest work in there soon. If you live in the Maidenhead area, check out the website http://nordenfarm.org

Boscastle: the forces of nature at work

I went to Boscastle in Cornwall and was astonished at the tidal range in the harbour. The quay wall must be 100 feet and parts of it are submerged at high tide and the seabed is completely uncovered at low tide. No wonder Turner loved to paint ships fighting to get into safe harbour. Even the mouth of the cove is a switchback cut between two towering walls of granite. I visited the harbour at different times of the day to catch the changing atmosphere. I was lucky enough to see an approaching storm sweeping in across the sea. I was thinking it will find it just as hard as the ships to fight its way into the harbour. Boscastle has always been more at risk from the rivers that flood in from behind than the sea. It is as if it is the front line in a struggle between the sea and the land with both wanting to claim the village as its own. It is a place of extraordinary energy. I'll be going back soon to tap into the atmosphere.