Multi-tasking - Warwickshire Open Studios 2014

My annual exhibition, together with my jeweller partner, as part of Warwickshire Open Studios has been more frenetic than usual. Crazily, I like to exhibit new work as some visitors come every year and I feel obliged not to display work that they have already seen. I am not a very prolific painter. I remember being taken on by my first London gallery in the seventies (Nicholas Treadwells). Nick asked about my output and when I said it was around eight paintings a year he laughed and said that I must get faster as a dealer needs around twenty to justify promoting an artist. Despite not increasing my productivity I was with him for seventeen successful years and nearly forty years later I am still only producing around eight paintings a year. I do paint faster, but I prefer to spend much more time choosing ideas and gathering information for my imagery. 
                                       After a lean period for sales since my last London gallery was a victim of the recession I made several sales this past year (mainly as a result of collectors coming to me). This made a welcome 'dent' in the work that I would have shown in this Open Studio show and necessitated a change in my usual working method. I normally work on only one painting at a time but I decided to start four at once in the hope that I would have them ready for Open Studios. I had previously tried working on two at a time (this makes sense if you paint in oils as you can move on to the other painting when one is too wet to work on). I however found that one of the pair became a 'favourite' and ended up better than the other, whereas if I do them 'back to back' and put all my effort into each one in turn they are equally successful. Contrary to my expectations I found working on four was both enjoyable and fruitful - as to whether they are any good, the viewers will have to make up their own mind. If they are well received it puts me in a quandary as I am obviously capable of increasing my output. Previously I had used some of the extensive preparatory work that didn't make the 'cut', and become a painting, as a subject for drawing. This time I didn't have the luxury of being too choosy and all the competing ideas became paintings.
                                I am an adherent to the 'less is more' school of thought as regards painting, both in terms of stripping down extraneous detail within each image and only painting the ideas that I find truly compelling. This facet of my personality could be interpreted as laziness but because I regard my life as an artist as a quest for some sort of enlightenment or insight, so the filtering of ideas and discarding of unnecessary or distracting detail is to me an essential part of the process. I realise that I have a lot more to say on this subject but I will save this for a future 'post'. Please take a look at my website if you would like to see the new paintings.
                                       Just to end on a lighter note below is my favourite quote on 'multi-tasking". The inimitable Billy Connolly while commenting on the prevailing view that men are unable to manage two activities simultaneously said….

"If women are so good at multi-tasking, how come they can't have a headache and sex at the same time?"