It occurs to me that I am still undermining my own success. I am distracted from my goal, funnily enough by the desire to offer an explanation such as this. I have made a concerted effort to ensure that I am fulfiling my aims in painting to the best of my ability and it remains enjoyable both in process and upon completion, but there is one criteria I have ignored which, whilst already observed, still detracts from all others. It is the desire for recognition.

Worldwide renown, universal adulation and massive museum retrospectives are, you will be surprised to learn, not the agenda. I'm referring to the traffic on my website - more or less the only place most people can see these paintings. It's not recognition on any grand scale, but what I publish does betray a desire to be seen to be making things, and in turn for the things themselves to be seen. And there is undoubted satisfation knowing that even a small number of other people are looking. Therefore it is impossible for this to remain an omissi from my fulfilment list. I suppose it comes down to ego. Much as it may be preferable to maintain a laid back appoach and claim not to care what anyone thinks, it just wouldn't be true.

But does it undermine the painting itself? A little bit, yes it probably does. There are not insignificant number of things I've made which, fun as they were to make, would not find their way into the public domain, mostly because they're too awful (yes, even for me!). This being the case, there will be a small part of me (naievly? Self importantly?) considering 'public opinion' whilst I work on a new painting. It may be that it has little effect on the result, but it's impossible to relieve this pressure entirely. The notion will always be there as a minor, but neverthless decisive factor influencing manufacture.

Thinking about this has lead me on to consider broader implications. My basic concern is that an influence outside of that initial and essential urge to do is probably detrimental. The purity of doing for the sake of enjoyment is worth pursuing, but can easily be corrupted when other factors creep in. When aims and intentions split and diverge, so that initial pleasure is diluted.

On rare and certainly not recent occasions, I have been asked to make work for a specific reason, to a theme, or even to be 'saleable'. Rarely has this resulted in a painting I have been happy with. Most have been passable, one or two even sold but more than a few have just been quite shit indeed. I don't recall ever really enjoying making things 'to order'. As soon as the reason to make was not lead solely (or a least predominantly) by the anticipation of enjoyment the task commonly became tiresome and the results unsuccessful. What was most displeasing however was not a poor result. It was the transformation of a pursuit intended and expected to be enjoyable into a chore to be completed.

I had a conversation with a friend not so long ago. She suggested one is better off being able to combine personal passion and paying the bills - finding a day job doing the thing you love. I disagreed, suggesting that work and pleasure ought to be kept seperate lest the former undermine the latter. Unsurprisingly we didn't reach an answer, but I would maintain that the not insignificant pressure of relying on doing the thing you love to pay the bills is highly likely to compromise your enjoyment. The counter arguement is of course that to work day in, day out at what you love should improve your overall mood. This may be the case, and I'm sure the truth lies somewhere in between, but I believe the loss of concentrated enjoyment outweighs the gain of fun diluted.

I maintain that my initial list of 'good' factors which are intended to steer my practice down the most enjoyable path possible are still correct and I'm happy to follow, however it would appear that excising the 'bad' factors is not as easy as I might have thought. On current evidence even identifying them appears to be rather less straightforward and it may be the case that I remain unaware of some or even many. Furthermore, identification may yet be too little. The urge to announce, manifest in every word and image on the pages of this site, has been iresistible despite being unmasked as a likely machine breaker to my engine of enjoyment. Who's to say further vices won't crawl out of the woodwork in days to come?

I refuse to take it all so seriously, it's such a strange activity, far too peculiar to be taken any other way.