Fidelma, no. 2

"Every time the model sits everything has changed. You have changed, she has changed. The light has changed, the balance has changed. The directions you try to remember are no longer there and, whether working from the mode*or landscape drawings, everything has to be reconstructed daily, many many times. …During all this time I'm working on other things. I might be particularly involved with my sitters or was changed over the years since I used to be more concerned with trying to finish one thing at a time. Now landscapes move from board to board, as do my paintings from life. It's my way of keeping the drawing in the painting alive, of being prepared to respond to the unexpected way. As time goes by the subject seem to take over my inner life. I begin to make extra associations and the need to finish becomes more urgent. A painter is engaged in a working process and the work is concerned with making the paint relate to his experience of seeing and being in the world" (L. Kossoff quoted in: Leon Kossoff, exh. cat, XLVI Venice Biennale, British Pavillion 1995, p. 25-26).