This picture has taken about thirty hours to paint, over six days. It arose primarily from an idea I had about a dark red shape pushing into a dark blue field. The relationship between the two colours was what interested me. So, in my habitual formal way I set the acute “impact point” a third down and a third across from the top right corner. I thought this could be a table so I added two tan coloured chair shapes in relation to the primary shapes so that the blue now became a double tailed shape in its own right, rather than just a background.
This all took place in my head before I set up the painting. When I set up the canvas this immediately looked right. Other thing stared to happen as I had not planned anything beyond the formal shapes and my trio of related colours.
Having once again been besieged at breakfast by our cat demanding to be included in our meal, I had another element to add, so this became Ben Nicholson meets Elizabeth Blackadder. Incidentally, he always gets fed before us or else there is a lot of loud protesting. It then became a simple matter toad the paraphernalia of our breakfast. Mats, pots of cereal and a jar of marmalade plus a couple of cups of tea.
I felt I was becoming typecast by my use of white lines to break up the pictorial elements in a painting so I decided to try doing this one without any and if there were to be linear elements to make sure they were not white. The texturing of the large primary areas of colour has been very important. I have also worked on the cat’s coat, the cereal in the jars and the crockery, giving these a secondary and contrasting role.

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