My present method of working is, in most cases I start directly on the painting. I occasionally make small sketches but not often. It’s quite different to the way I worked previously, when I made very careful and thorough drawings, enlargements, colour sketches and so forth. I feel again, as my wife said, as she feels she’s becoming more on the expressionist side, so my own work in one sense is loosening up, and I find possibly that starting on the job itself and trying to carry it through then possibly either throwing it away or scraping it off and starting again, allows one to do things that are a more definite approach. Sometimes [it] ties down. In other words, I think I tend to be much too tight or worry too much about the little sketches, and in the process of doing that the big one loses a certain amount of spontaneity. I’m quite sure it’s my fault; it’s not in the procedure because the old masters, I understood it, worked that way and certainly their final results, to me, leave nothing to be desired. But again, it’s the method of trying a slightly different approach.
[I’m] still working, of course, with theatre, and with this, and at the moment I’m getting back to painting again, as there seems to be less theatre work, and so I have more time too.
I should have mentioned previously, of course, one reason I married my wife was, I thought I had one of the best critics, and she’d be very handy to have around, apart from any other reason.
And as she knows, I usually ask her opinion, and then she gets very irritated if I, not necessarily disagree with her but I still insist, that she says ‘What?’ but I’ve found it’s pretty infallible. In other words, I’m not my own best critic by a long shot, and one needs a certain amount of either support, moral support or an outside view, I think, and I certainly value hers more than anyone else’s.
