In the forthcoming group exhibition, TENTERDEN ARTISTS IN RYE on the weekend of the 21 ^st and 22 ^nd of April I’ll be showing three small recent paintings with a blue cup.

(A BLUE CUP IN BATTLE GREAT WOOD. oil on canvas. cat 646. 10″x14″)

I found this unassuming cast off cardboard coffee cup on the pavement of a south coast seaside town and it became the subject of a series of twenty still life paintings co-starring alongside Paul Cezanne, a detail from Picasso’s Guernica and the Virgin Mary.

(THE CRY F THE COMMUTER. oil on canvas. Cat 635. 12″x16″)

It was the startling colour, that little piece of summer sky, that I bent to scoop up off the pavement but it is also a mundane everyday object, a take away coffee cup and that has lent itself to a narrative within so many paintings.

()

I’m never confident with colour and although I like to involve saturated colour in my compositions I keep those strong colours controlled and corralled; I set them against areas of subtle muted colour or pale walls and I rarely let them play together.

The first painting in which I can find the blue cup was PATISSERIE  from the summer of 2013. I still have the painting and another PINK BOX (26”x16”. Cat 509) which were my own hymns of praise to Waitrose’s Sultana and lemon Danish pastries. Their patisserie used to be put into these shockingly pink boxes.

The Blue Cup went up onto my shelves to be jostled by the throng of characters, repertory actors waiting for a role in a painting. Its longevity was probably due to one little painting, BLUE CUP AND MEASURING TAPE (Cat 526. 8”x10”). I sold it to a friend but perhaps because of the size of the painting (about the size of a sheet of A4) or its moderate price, I could have sold this painting fifty times and so I’ve made other versions of the composition over the past five years.

(BLUE CUP AND A TAPE MEASURE. oil on canvas. 8″x10″ cat 526)

To my mind the Blue Cup’s moment came when I brought a Postcard back from a trip to Venice. Sassoferrato’s Virgin had hugely impressed me and I wanted to include it in a composition. Blue was the prescribed colour for the Virgin Mary’s cloak (a Renaissance painter was not allowed to show Christ’s mother in an orange roll neck sweater).

(Sassoferrato’s Virgin. oil on canvas. Cat 579. 14″x14″)

Sassoferrato’s Virgin was one of those rare paintings that arrive effortlessly like gifts and I sold the painting at Bedford School last year. The blue cup, the Postcard, a pair of wire reading glasses and a couple of coins worked together, they seemed to suggest a narrative that hung just under the surface of being understood.

(unfinished state. CEZANNE WITH THE BLUE CUP.  oil on canvas. Cat 638. 40cm x 40cm)