I worked on this ‘painting’ (there is not actually much paint on it) for only a few concentrated moments at a time. This is its nature and I like to follow what that is. Not so much a painting that is made but one that becomes. It's a very delicate thing, like bomb disposal work, one false move and it's all over.
One of my favourite qualities in a work of art is fragility.

I use bleach to take away the dyed canvas. I daresay if I was properly committed I would use the suns rays and mask areas out, have the work lying on the grass. In Scotland, with its puny sun that would probably take about 50 years. Short cuts are needed and for this I thank Domestos.

Its the the third approach to this image, once as small work on an orange canvas book cover, then as a lithograph and now a larger painting. All slightly different shapes.

The image is based on a photograph of Caitlin Thomas and her child on the estuary mud of the River Taf, at Laugharne in Wales. It is taken by somebody looking down. I imagine it might be taken by Caitlin’s husband, Dylan from the wooden balcony of their terrific ship-shape house. Even as a photograph it is quite hard to read at first. Utterly mysterious, as photographs often are….moments in time…maybe it was a moment of calm for Dylan Thomas in the chaos of his life, looking down from above detachedly, soberly at his wife and child, a portent of his early death.

Thinking of those photographs of yourself at certain moments of the past. You can’t deny its you but your relationship to that person is detached, exiled. There you are. There I am, or was. I was there. Your own life can be the greatest of mysteries, especially those times and areas where photography didn’t or couldn’t go, or hardly ever did.

“I was there” went Max Boyce’s catchphrase or mantra. Another Welshman. Maybe it's a slightly corny title but has hidden depths, like simple words often do. Each word denoting aspects of presence and time: I - WAS - THERE.