Being locked down, I emptied the garden shed and moved in there to paint for a while. It's a bright space made from pretty much all recycled materials. I forgot how nice it was to hang out in here. I like the two front doors. I got them from a Chinese restaurant near my studio. They are hardwood and weigh a ton. It was like a comedy trying to get them out of the skip onto the roof rack of our car. In the end a few of the waiters saw me struggling and helped. A friend gave me the windows. It's good to have a place to work. I need to empty my head.
When flames and snakes are your neighbours, they can't help but be part of the story. This rough, heavy-duty cotton canvas has been in my studio for probably eight years. It was unprimed, so I spent months applying thin layers of oil paint before it went anywhere. I like the dryness that comes from all that soakage and the roughness of the surface. There were wildfires near the sea, and you could see the glow of orange at night in the distance. I was grappling with a shape similar to the one I am painting here back in Ireland. I tried it again when I got to Italy, but it wasn't until I saw the shape as a flame that it unlocked itself. On some of the smaller landscapes, these flames appeared …