BIRD BRAIN
Oil on Stretched Canvas
90cm x 120cm
Unframed
I’ve wanted to destroy this painting for nearly a year.
It began as a purely abstract work, built through months and months of conflict and attempted resolution. Layer upon layer of paint, marks, revisions and contradictions. The thing weighs a ton. Every attempt to resolve it seemed to create another problem, another direction, another reason to keep painting.
Then one day, watching the birds outside my forest studio, I began laying down marks that suggested something recognisable. Almost without warning, the painting shifted from abstraction into something far more discernible.
A bird emerged from the noise.
And something in me told me to stop.
Not because the painting suddenly felt resolved. It didn’t. There are still marks I want to make, things I want to change, directions I could take it. But something has stopped me from painting over it, despite how many times I’ve wanted to.
I’ve been wondering whether a painting can be finished without feeling resolved. Or whether it can be resolved without ever feeling finished.
There’s an idea often attributed to Willem de Kooning that he never really finished paintings; some simply escaped from the studio.
I think I finally understand that.
This painting won’t let me do any more to it, but it won’t let me make peace with it either.
It exists in this strange state of tension, somewhere between completion and uncertainty. I’ve never had quite this relationship with another painting.
Perhaps that’s what makes it interesting to me.
Perhaps Bird Brain just needs to escape the studio.
Not because I’ve finally figured it out.
But because I haven’t.
