I have received some unexpected reactions to my recent paintings and accompanying texts. Most surprising is that the responses have not been completely dimissive! I have had a good deal of encouragement and appreciation, but the feedback that has interested me most is the critical.

The criticism is of 2 kinds; Misunderstanding and disagreement over the idea of painting for enjoyment. The first has manifest as an assumption that my painting has been a kind of "cry for help" expressed here in my texts as a "tortured narrative". A diary of woe - struggle, despair and desperation. I can only assume that I have explained it all quite poorly, but to say that this perception misses the point is putting it mildly. Without redrafting everything I've written to date I should like to assert as clearly as possible that my attempts to derive fun from doing painting are thus far yielding a good deal of success. Not stretched on a rack of my own construction. Not riddled with angst and self pity. Just having a rather nice time. Perhaps its just that people aren't used to reading something that isn't cloaked in artspeak and tickled by the fluffer of self promotion. But I'm not really selling anything. In fact I'm giving it away for free.

The second, more interesting critique is that painting just for the fun of it is not a valid approach. Various reasons have been offered: There should be more to it. It should be more inellectually rigourous, less apologetic, more confident or aggressive. It should be a struggle to communicate something or other. Hard work. A fight. Coincidentally a similar point of view appeared in an interview with painting patners Matthew Collings & Emma Biggs last month. They say "Why do we run onto the battlefield of contemporary art...? Because some battles are worth having. There has to be something better... Be brave artist warriors - rise up and fight!"

But to what battleifield does he refer? What are we meant to struggle against? Let's get some perspective here; we're only making pretty pictures. Why make it all so difficult? If it's within your grasp to enjoy and avoid a fight then do so. Don't tell me there are things in contemporary art worth fighting that hard for. And if you have the stomach for a fight, might I suggest there are arenas better suited and better served than picture painting? You might want to lay hands on a weapon more threatening than a fucking paintbrush too.

The things I do struggle with are so entirely unworthy of dissection, analysis and presentation through painting and of so little interest to me, let alone anyone else that frankly I'd be embarrased, bored and mildly depressed addressing them. Anyway, why on earth would i want to shoehorn my largely insignificant problems into my little bit of escapism? Finding a moment for a bit of indulgence is hard enough without turning it into a big weepy wallow. I'm disinclined to make the thing that's fun not fun just for the sake of it being seen to be addressing serious, not fun subjects and more than just the desire for fun alone. That would make no sense.

No, I'm quite happy making things to make myself quite happy, and after that making others happy. I'm not interested in what I (imagine I) 'should' do any more. If I was, I probably wouldn't be doing very much at all. Indulgence trumps compulsion and it's got me painting in what feels like a far more productive and progressive manner than in the past. Painting is necessary to no single individual's ongoing existance. If you're going to do something pointless, at least have a good time doing it.

Whilst I occasionally read critics on art theory I inevitably gain much more from reading an artist's own words. They tend to be more straightforward and enlightening in terms of practice, influence, approach and so on and written in a succinct and candid manner. Some examples:

Robert Motherwell on the origin of his series of Open paintings.

One day I had a vertical canvas about seven by four feet... By studio chance, leaning against it was a smaller canvas...and in looking at the wooden chassis of the smaller rectangle against the larger the two together struck me as having a beautiful proportion... So I picked up a piece of charcoal and just outlined the smaller canvas on the larger one... it was a picture in itself, a lovely painted surface plane, beautifully, if minimally, divided.

Richard Hamilton in Collected Words on making his painting Portrait of Hugh Gaitskell as a famous monster of filmland:

...a painting which doesn't induce the depressing frustration of knowing that the end result is a total failure, in spite of the fact that it doesn't measure up to a daydream.

Robert Ryman:

Painting is about the visual; the meaning of painting is painting.

All of which I take as encouragement that my approach is of no less value than any other. Robert Motherwell's comment is most pleasing to me as it illustrates just how immediate, straightforward and whim-lead the inception of a painting (and a good painting to boot) can be. I identify closely with the frustration Hamilton mentions, particularly in the context of execution's common failure to live up to imagination. Ryman's remark, whilst the least explicit and most romanticised of the three I take on face value. There really is no need for painting to address more than its own concerns.

Therefore I have adopted a similar approach to artists such as these in the way I write in order to communicate as clearly as I can. I'm sorry if it sounds apologetic (boom boom), but count the shits I give. Occasionally the artists themselves are able to blow away a bit of the Enigmatic Fog of Infuriation (it's a thing. Google it) that surrounds art making and tell it like it is. It's refreshing to find, once in a while, that their approach both practically and theoretically is not that different to my own.

Less than zero?