Usually I work directly from the life model or the landscape. However, I can use another approach in the studio, as in this Pol Cornick series, where I allow the painting process to realise something I did not ‘know’ or had forgotten, about the experience of walking on the west coast of the Lizard where I live.

I started with my winter 2003/4 sketchbook; found two free sketches* of the waves running into Pol Cornick cliffs. With a palette guided by previous work, I worked up a study.

Now, with three larger newly prepared canvases, there followed a succession of paint then draw, iterations. This drawing in either charcoal or paint, reacts to the canvas surface and a feeling for each element: the sea and spray reflecting snatches of sunlight, cliffs in shadow, the ever receding sky, but not the known detail of the landscape, if possible, this must come only from my hand knowing the sketch, executed fast.

I continued these paint-draw iterations, not very systematically I must admit, until I suddenly feel the painting itself is telling me something new about my landscape. On a future walk, I will be looking at a particular interaction of cliffs, ocean and light, and say “there is that painting!”