I Believe That The Quintessential Task Of

Contact With Like-minded Painters - A Group Means A Great Deal To Me: Nothing Comes In Isolation. We Have Worked Out Our Ideas Largely By Talking Them Through. Shutting Myself Away In The Country, For Instance, Would Do Nothing For Me. One Depends On One's Surroundings. And So The Exchange With Other Artists - And Especially The Collaboration With Lueg And Polke - Matters A Lot To Me: It Is Part Of The Input That I Need.

Grey. It Makes No Statement Whatever; It Evokes Neither Feelings Nor Associations: It Is Really Neither Visible Nor Invisible. Its Inconspicuousness Gives It The Capacity To Mediate, To Make Visible, In A Positively Illusionistic Way, Like A Photograph. It Has The Capacity That No Other Colour Has, To Make 'nothing' Visible.

These Pictures Possibly Give Rise To Questions Of Political Content Or Historical Truth. Neither Interests Me In This Instance. And Although Even My Motivation For Painting Them Is Probably Of No Significance, I Am Trying To Put A Name To It Here, As An Articulation, Parallel To The Pictures, As It Were, Of My Disquiet And Of My Opinion.

The Political Topicality Of My October Paintings Means Almost Nothing To Me, But In Many Reviews It Is The First Or Only Thing That Arouses Interest, And The Response To The Pictures Varies According To Current Political Circumstance. I Find This Rather A Distraction.

Everything Has A Reason, Including The Selection Of The Photos, Which Was Not Arbitrary But Appropriate To The Period, Its Highs And Lows And My Sense Of Them.