Atalaya was painted during the heatwave during July/August 2023. The Spanish name of the mountain at bottom right is Atalaya, in English; the watchtower. A lowering, flaming sky with a eucalyptus are viewed toward the desert at Tabernas.

It's been a very rewarding but also a quite disrupted journey over the last year or two - and indeed I have to move again in September. To paint with a 'head full of bees' is never easy hence the thinking behind this piece was to pick up a two year old thread, update it, find the themes that connect now to then both personally and within the work for that is always where the magic happens. 

Over the last few weeks of this record breaking summer while I worked I was listening to Barry Lopez 'Horizon' and lately corresponding with Robert Pogue Harrison; two of the most important writers of our upended times both of whom I hold to be touchstones and exemplars of a guiding set of principles in my work as described by Roland Barthes in reference to the work of Michealangelo Antonioni: to be an artist requires Fragility, Vigilance and Wisdom -Barthes also said that we have far too many priests and idealogues and the counter to that are exactly these qualities.