Dab, Dab, Dab.

Wash, mix, breathe, poise and dab - cut, hold... flourish! The line is done. I'm working on a painting this morning: a colour abstract - something I am returning to after a period of exploration in other styles and ideas. 

In many ways this is a quixotic project - something I thought I had done with, but as I continue I find myself drawn to the minute detail, to the pattern of the everyday, and to the precision of each stroke. The painting has been blocked in, and even the smaller details have been established - colours, shades and tones have been created. Now I find I am drawn to micro-sections, changes that happen with flicks and touches on the canvas, slowly building the images from what it was to what it will be. With each new section I find myself becoming immersed further and further in the logic of each fleck of colour and pattern.

Outside I am surprised - summer has begun. Skies are clear and azure blue with only the odd wisp of froth drifting through the air. Trees display their coats just as we dispense with ours. Shades and shapes of green punctuate the train tracks as I wait this morning. The palette of blue and yellow is blended as new buds and wiser heads combine to create a dappled corridor where the sun creeps through and dances in a steady breeze. Elderflower and cow parsley dot whiter shades around and shadow stretch long across the bleached stone and metal of the tracks.

Here time is slow motion - soothed by the cooing of birds, and the crackle of the station tannoy. Each moment stretches - it's own experience, with seconds that belong only and firmly to it. I bask in this feeling, this sense that the now is everything and there is peace - about the future, about him the past; there is just the warmth, the colours and the soft warble around me.
Today I seek the tangible, the present - the things that I can influence and make meaning of, and not the vast infinity of possibility and circumstance I cannot. Although I can't help feeling that in focusing intently on single view I can drift towards a myopia or dislocation from the whole. I run the danger of staring too closely at the looking glass, and, like Alice, falling through. 

Regardless, I once again raise my brush in salute… Dab, dab, dab.