“Ten” is starting to feel, I’m tempted to to say almost good, but no, Ten is starting to feel rewarding, no, not rewarding, stimulating maybe? It is a discipline to feel a painting must be concluded every day. A recap, “Ten” is a now four day old series on daily concluded paintings, each one on an identical 10cm square canvas – that doesn’t mean a painting is started and finished everyday, it means a small 10cm paining is concluded everyday, there are, at the moment, around twenty 10cm pieces in progress here in the studio next to various bigger paintings, the latest “counting” painting and other pieces that are work in progress, I am just about to head out to pick up some more of those ten centimetre square canvases. I can’t say I’m happy with any of the four “Ten” pieces produced yet, too cluttered, they need to be simpler, looser, a little more alive, maybe by day 43 we might be getting somewhere?

On with the recap, it is all about the act of painting, about paint, about the act of just doing of it, of doing it again and again, about keeping it simple, refining it, not letting the painting takeover. Not a quick painting, nothing ever throwaway, a punk rock painting maybe? No, that sounds too glib, a considered painting, a refined simple painting, one concluded each day, each one on a 10cm square canvas. Ten, clean, precise, but never precise – a painting a day concluded, not started an finished, just concluded. yes It has done it before, there have been daily paintings before, I have always liked the appointment of a painting concluded on a day, a discipline if you will. And yes, a tenner, a hardcore tenner, a need to do it and then just sell it for a simple tenner for no more than the price of a CD or a vinyl album, a tenner – it should never sound cheap, it should never sound greedy (and I hope you won’t flip them), one finished every day until the day comes when it feels right to stop, until the day comes where it feel like a bind, until it feel like I’m doing it just for the sake of doing it rather than doing it in a positive manner. A positive commitment to finish a small 10cm x 10cm canvas painting a day and them offer that daily painting at a price of £10 every day. The further exploring of the notions of the Cheap Art Manifesto, a small painting on a canvas that measures 10cm x 10cm – Ten, ten sounds right, a new series of paintings called “Ten”, a painting posted and made available everyday, I imagine they will be posted on my Instagram account first, and then in all the usual places, tt will be a case of sending a personal message or an e.mail if you want to buy it, it will be about first come first served, and yes there always has to be a hashtag, the hashtag will be #SWTen