It is a lot to do with sustainability, substantiality of thought as well as well as in the more obvious ways. sustainable art, sustainable thought. In the last four days I have found three large canvases, all with awful mass produced shop-sold prints on them, probably all shipped from China and all just carelessly thrown away, one at least left on the street, the other two just thrown in a Hackney bin (and not even the recycling bin), it is far more than just annoying and all three are now here in the studio and crying out to be painted over as soon as possible.  last week I found a big bag of mostly unused sketch books and rather interesting good quality art paper (along with a rather intriguing musical instrument, some kind of exotic string thing, a half finished manuscript for a play and a number of rather good unsigned paintings) The bag, one again left on the street which at lease indicates it as left with the hope that someone like me would come along, included an unopened package of twenty sheets of A6 150gms handmade cotton rag paper which of course demanded attention. As I do keep saying, if people will insist of throwing things out on the street then leaves will grow on those things…

And it is Spring and leaves are growing rather well during this April Heatwave. Sure this weather, as glorious as it is, is not right? Surely this is a problem, well obviously so. Last Sunday we rescued about 43 plants from the jaws of a Hackney bin lorry at the end of Columbia Road’s weekly flower market,  not even left on the street for people to take, why? They are now all here at the studio, well some of them have already found their way to a West London garden, some of them will be painted today, unwanted plants and Spring flowers to be painted on unwanted cotton rag paper. I did use some of that paper yesterday, small Spring paintings, who knows what will become of the paintings, maybe they will just end up in landfill? Maybe the material gets to hang around a little longer than it would have done?

And as we were talking about Spring and new growth, “This Year’s Amaryllis (2025)” – Acrylic on canvas, 40x40x1cm, April 2025. A painting that was waiting to be finished here as the spring heatwave goes on…

Meanwhile the leaving of leaves goes on, the #43Leaves pieces. As always painted on found unwanted recycled material picked up off the street, picked up, cleaned up, painted on and then left hanging back out there on the street for someone to just take should they wish to… The 51st of the year was left hanging on a West End railing last Thursday. Always painted on found material, that is a very very important part of it, there has probably been more like three thousand than two thousand leaves left now, this year the intention is to leave 365 leaves… Follow the #43Leaves leaves via my Instagram thing, there’s never enough time to stop and document them all here, although I am attempting to film each leaf left this year