Thank-you very much, Tom!

I love the emotional quality this painting has. Captivating. And the way you painted your child slightly out of focus leaving the main focus on your face and eyes in particular.

Thank-you very much Alan. It's fortunate that the child's out-of-focus quality does work, because he wouldn't sit still long enough to get more detail in it!

Thomasin, one leaves for a few days and you just land this new benchmark for us all!

A couple of questions because I am not sure I can overcome envy and a flow of negative feelings upon my own work right now.
-Do you work in natural light and use the spot to enhance colours? When i add artificial light everything just seems to become duller!
- Your paintings seem to have a lot of texture, is that just paint build up or do you work on a gesso textured surface?
Ilaria

Oh don't be envious, Ilaria. I was inspired by your approval of H

Glowing!
 

What a lovely effect, your paintings remind me of mother of pearl, they just glow. I love your palette and you know when to stop adding details at the perfect stage.
Thank you for the mention of Hakon Gullvag, what an inspiring style he has too.

Thank-you Margaret. I am trying to get the essence of what really moves me to paint a figure, and leave out or remove the rest. Sometimes it is difficult to know what that essence is, but finding it has a lot to do with the application of the paint i.e. putting the paint on in such a way as to suggest rather than illustrate things. In this way the painting tells me a story - rather than me having a predetermined story that I want to impose on the painting.

Hi Thomasin, I love this painting!

You said you were doing this one to please yourself. I think we should always try to please ourselves when we paint. It seems to me when we succeed in that, we almost never fail to please others.

Thank-you Christy. I feel much healthier and able to withstand criticism and rejection when I am painting what I want when I want. At least then I can be sure of having pleasure and being happy, whereas relying on approval from others is always a bit of a risk, and so much time can be wasted in waiting for it.