How much time can you spend on a painting? How long is a piece of string? I’ve been working and reworking this painting on and off for several months, maybe 18 months. I think I’ve even tried to call it finished several times, and then go and have a little tinker, and the whole process starts again. There are rhythms to grief, in the arranging of elements to make a tableau. The layers are starting to build up, making symmetrical patterns of the figures, the fruit, the cameos and the glasses. Arranging things in the painting to try and explain the unexplainable – hence a focus on one thing, and not another.

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