Over the past couple of years, I’ve found that I’ve become less attached to completing a painting on site. Now, it may be a matter of months until a painting seems resolved, and it takes much more work in the studio, away from the subject. I used to enjoy the challenge of going outdoors and saying what I had to say in one go, with perhaps only a few little tweaks afterwards – a fencing match with nature. Now it feels more as if I must allow the painting time to tell me what it really wants. It throws a little line to me, and I must catch it. The moment of closure is more open-ended, and frankly most of the time stopping and saying “it’s done” seems almost arbitrary and is usually because I just want to move on to something else. I have absolutely no idea whether this results in better paintings, but it feels more engaged to me. All of this has happened before over the forty years of my painting life. As I go on, I realize how much and how little I understand painting. Keeps things interesting, which is the point.