The Secret

The Secret - detail, pen and ink

Here is a detail of a drawing for you to enjoy.

The art I that I really like is all about revealing secrets, opening drawers, peering inside wardrobes: art as psychological prying; the sick delight in going through another persons wallet, their purse, their diaries; touching things you know only they touch; not knowing if they will suspect that someone has read their letter or slipped their hand into their pocket.

Drawing is, for me, a way of accessing this condition of revelation. It's more intimate, closer than my painting which always has a faintly official feel about it- a public art form: robust, designed for places where respectability, a public face is of import.

Trees

The paper was rather small, barely much larger than A4, so next time I'll get a bigger piece, probably A1. I felt cramped when working so small and I feat the image seems cramped too.

I really need a little table too: it's uncomfortable supporting the board on ones knees.

The thing is to be to know which elements to exclude: to aim for simplicity and concision: you have to take your time, to have a plan, so as not to be overwhelmed by nature's abundance. It takes enormous concentration and I'm not surprised the Chinese masters would pray before working.

Evidence of the gesture lends energy, but shouldn't obscure description- there has to be a tension between illustration and abstraction.

It's important not to panic when things don't quite go right, but almost impossible not to.

Ink Tools, perversity

I've unearthed these- some were inherited from kind Dr Bednarowski- they are at least 50 years old and reassuringly weighty.

I have to get a board to affix the paper to so it doesn't buckle. Ink is very high risk: potentially any slip can lead to a wasted piece of paper. But I tend to think best when I think quickly.

The longer I take to decide something the worse it is for me, but the perversity of my nature is such that I have always yearned to make art that represents not flux and fluency but the opposite- stasis, authority, tradition: the art of the imperium.

A Social Gathering (sketch for an unpainted painting)

Various people meet at a party, their intention being to consume alcohol and debase themselve in different ways.

It's significant where they meet. It has to be a very large room, grand and gloomy and sparsely furnished. Such furniture that there is is Empire Style, so heavy it is almost immovable. A fireplace scarcely warms the freezing room.

All the people at this party are male, but sometimes women with loose morals attend. They are all High Tories: utterly reactionary. They declare themselves to be patriots, but they despise their fellow nationals as peasants. They enjoy ceremony: the parties always have a ritualistic feel, with patriotic speeches and toasts. They dress to suit the solemnity of the occasion, in dinner suits.

Alcohol, preferable deep red in colour, is served by waiters whose obsequiousness knows no bounds.

As is often the case with such people, they are surprisingly liberal in terms of private conduct. And although the former part of their meeting is formal, later this liberalism dominates, as the gathering transforms into a bacchanal: not only do they become copiously drunk but they allow their latent homosexual urges and sado-masochistic desires to manifest themselves.