The first first was impulse-buying a set of water-soluble oil paints, the second was watching past seasons of Landscape Artist of the Year (2017 and 2018) again, this time, looking at process and techniques. It had occurred to me that I’ve never seen anyone actually making work, never seen a piece of work from beginning to end, and never heard live, constructive critiquing, albeit conversational, by people who seem to know a thing or two.

WordPress just lost an entire paragraph due to an ‘illegal’ something or other but didn’t say what. Perhaps trying to use the same box to initiate a new paragraph was the problem. I’d assembled some words about small canvases and produced a rather poetic line describing the ease of application of this medium and absence of toxic odour.

In the process of painting over the photo, I decided to remove it altogether and paint into the spaces – which is the point someone, maybe even me, will say they preferred it at that stage. As an image, I think it has some merit, but to me, as a painting on my easel and in my hand, it was scrappy and unfinished. Now I can see the river at flood with its churned-up mud heading hell-for-leather up stream towards its origin until, the tide having lost interest and moved away from coast just a few miles away, it will come hurtling back down again.

© Suzanne Conboy-Hill