Question 4

regarding the 'pebble project

S.W:

'It sounds like you have carefully eliminated a lot of things and honed a process to allow 'flow' in the making part of your practice; and then are able to step back and analyse more critically. Is it possible for you to tell me more about the analysis?

Are you happier with some works more than others?  If so, what is it about them that makes them more successful in your eyes?'

R.K:

An 'elimination' of sorts has to take place during every painting project. The process might be divided into stages, so that the first stage is looking for, and selecting a stone to paint.

The next stage is looking at, and maybe sketching the selected stone. Then comes the painting process, and during this the 'intent' will evolve.

I think a painting I can be happy with is one where the paint has become 'something in itself'...

when the subject-matter has been drained (so to speak), and the real stone is the one on the canvas, (although at this point, not a stone at all!) The canvas is also gone...I work to saturate the canvas so that hardly anything remains of the canvas weave.)

All of this is of cause mostly 'a feeling', but it's the process of actual painting that allows that transition...the 'detection work', and then a transition into a sort of abstraction, or 'new truth'.

I start off by looking intensely at the stone, and gradually end up shifting that intense looking to the canvas...in there lies the 'analysis'...if you can call it that.