This is a sketch for a painting I am currently working on. The image from which this sketch emerged was of a group of football players celebrating a goal. If my memory is accurate it was Hull City. That is of little importance though.

I knew that what interested me about the sketch was the collection of figures on the floor who seem to have formed a heap as if fallen. A collection of still standing figures seemed to present the potential to become protagonists rather than a part of the mellee (as they were, in the case of the three on the right, in the original image) Beyond this I did not really have to much idea, or much desire for any idea, as to what the picture would become or be about.

It is a paitning I am still struggling with, and I am not sure it will pull together. I think with the right additions it might suddenly find a certain harmony, but with that kind of tension which emerges when harmony is found at the last minute. The other kind of balance is one which seems to exist throughout and tends to be quite dull, due to a crucial lack of said tension.

Whilst completion is struggling to be found some form of relevance does seem to be pushing itself forward. I tihnk it is a painting about excess. A kind of post Baccanalian sense of uncontrolled debauchery. The mess of figures on the floor, the dancing cartoon grotesques, the mess of different stylistic approaches, the excessive and crude use of colour and painterly techniques. Its like some egotistical, pissed up cock jangle. 

Its quality, an abstract term, and its relevance don’t necessarily hugely concern me. In truth I tihnk it might turn out to be a crap painting. What is of interest though, is how imagery, subject, content and meaning do seem to have found their way forward without any real preconceived agenda or notion on my part. In large scale format this is one of the first times this has happened.