When does a subject become an obsessive preoccupation? Sometimes I immerse myself in a subject so deeply that it is impossible to leave it alone, hammering away at it like a jack russell attached to my leg, only giving up when I have utterly exhausted all avenues of possibility. Painting is a very sexy thing to do, and paint is a sensual medium to work with. The process from the start to the end of a project can follow all the same patterns of an obsessive love, from the honeymoon period to the final break-up when you relinquish all attachment to your own created object of desire – with all the associated emotions of intensive highs and lows. Anything can trigger an obsessive interest, even something as seemingly mundane as these bits of binder-twine that I found on the coastal path at Bass Point that a farmer has used to hold his rustic fencing together.
