the painting that took eight months

Below is a diptych, a work split across two canvases each measuring one metre square. It’s by far the largest painting I’ve ever made. While I’ve been working on it I’ve had such a headful of thoughts, not just about the painting, though there is plenty to say on that front, but also the process itself and the journey that has unfolded in the eight months since the paintbrush first hit these canvases. Eight months?! Yup. Eight months.

Let me explain.

Above: The finished diptych in situ

The process

This diptych, called “We’ll Meet Again”, has been a long time in the works. I began it back in February of this year, long before I developed my current painting style. 

After four days of laying down paint, I knew that what I wanted to say with this piece couldn’t yet be achieved with the skills I had at my disposal. My vision for it needed my artistic vocabulary to catch up. You could see the earliest indications of the style that was emerging - drips that conceal and reveal layers beneath, paint spatters, areas of impenetrable opacity contrasted with thin glazes - but lacking the conviction and confidence that was needed to develop the canvases fully.

Above: Here’s what the canvases looked like after those first four days of throwing paint around. A well-intentioned but under-developed colour palette, and the earliest indication of an emerging style is there, but it would be eight months before I returned with a clear intention of how to proceed.

Above: Work in Progress. Taking fresh paint to a piece that’s sat untouched for months feels like reckless vandalism. It’s scary and exhilarating in equal measure.

On top of that, the vision of what exactly I wanted to create wasn’t yet in sharp relief. It was like my mind’s eye was short-sighted and had misplaced its glasses. I knew the feeling I wanted to evoke, the sense of depth and expansiveness, but it was more of a case of “I’ll know it when I see it”. 

The problem with art making, though, is that you have to see it in order to make it, else you’ll spend a long time fumbling around in the darkness of your mind, crossing your fingers that you’ll happen upon whatever it is you’re hoping to find. Of course it’s possible to do it that way around, but it will take a lot longer and a lot more energy, both creative and physical.

Above: Work in progress

Knowing that I couldn’t hurry the process, the two canvases went up on the living room wall, knowingly - glaringly, to my self-critical eye - unfinished. There they sat ever since, waiting patiently for me to evolve in unknown ways before they’d be returned to the easel.

Returning to this diptych eight months on has been a revelation. All the things I wanted to say are now crystal clear, and all the ways I wanted to say them now come so much more naturally. 

It all comes back to that depth and expansion. February’s iteration of the diptych looked nothing like the cosmic landscapes I create now because I had yet to make the connection between the goal of creating that feeling - depth and expansion - and the universe beyond our Earthly stratosphere. 

Above: My trusty spray bottle filled with water. This tool is as important as any paintbrush in my process.

I had also yet to understand the push and pull between my human touch and sense of control as the artist vs allowing the laws of physics to assist in the process, inviting the inimitable fingerprint of the universe itself. I frequently use water and gravity in my process precisely because of the uncontrollable nature of the results.

Meshing the two together is an integral part of making the piece cohesive. If the human touch, or what I think of as the “push”, feels too heavy handed it breaks the illusion of peering into a distant corner of the universe. If the pull, or the universal laws I invite into the process, go entirely unchecked, the result would be chaotic and muddy. Finding the balance has been months in the making, and something I knew I wanted to master, just a little bit, before returning to those two great big canvases.

Above: My adorable sidekick Eddie keeps me company while I work in the studio.

The name

While I’m working on any given piece, I hope that the name will present itself quite naturally. Forcing a name onto a painting doesn’t feel great - after all, it has its own identity that I feel I must honour. I describe the names I give my paintings as ‘colloquial’. I purposefully don’t want them to feel too lofty. The subject matter itself is lofty enough, so by giving them names that feel entirely earthbound, even conversational, I offer a relationship to the cosmos that anybody can tap into. 

For a while I was stumped on the name for this piece. From the very start the paintings were about two souls who were separated by space, time, or both: Star-crossed lovers with bad timing; long-distance loved ones beset by geography; one person left behind when the other’s time on Earth drew to a close. There’s a bittersweet sense of longing in there. 

Above: Detail of the finished diptych, focusing on the split across the two canvases.

Creating a piece split across two separate canvases was one way to embed that meaning, and the large format was another - I needed all those square inches to underline the distance between two places. The name, of course, would seal that meaning into the work once and for all, but nothing I could come up with did justice to the depth of feeling I experienced while painting. I always know when it’s ‘right’, and nothing was feeling right.

Ultimately, the name for this diptych came suddenly and unexpectedly. As I entered the final stages of the painting process, where the stars are given their twinkles, the tune for “We’ll Meet Again” by Vera Lynn came to mind. It was perfect. It spoke to all the emotions I’d poured into the piece - the love, the separation, the bittersweet longing for reunion, the hope for the other’s happiness while enduring that time apart.

I also realised that the song, so related as it is to the generation who lived through and fought in WW2, evoked memories of my beloved grandparents, all of whom are sadly no longer with me. Whenever I do something I love, be it woodwork, baking, gardening, or painting, I think of how happy my grandparents would be to see me living so fully and authentically. They live on in all things I do, but maybe especially this painting, as twinkling stars in the vast cosmic landscape.