65.5 cm (w) x 45.5 cm (h), oil paints on stretched paper.

Tamarisk Pines^* at the drive-in theatre, West Beach, before 1986. It is warm and sunny, with a strong feeling of brightness and openness, against the blue sky. The wind, and its movements of the foliage. This was a really nice collection of trees, with fine, lightly coloured needles. Throughout the afternoon, in the sun the forms were suggested with interesting shadows in a similar way to cumulus clouds. The foliage would glow warmly and openly in the bright sunshine. I did several paintings, pastels and drawings of these trees, all basically from this same viewpoint.

On a preliminary drawing of these same trees, I mention in some written notes that my concentration is impeded by having ants crawling up my legs and trousers. It might sound funny, but that type of thing was typical for doing most of my drawings and paintings outside, directly from the real thing. Mosquitoes, flies, ants, spiders, lizards, birds, sounds, smells, bitterly cold air, cold aching fingers, being hot and sweaty in the sun, needing to go to the toilet (but no toilet around), sitting for hours at a time on a small stool with minimal equipment, having people come along making various comments - are all things that are easy to take for granted when looking at drawings and paintings produced outside. You won’t always see the evidence of these things. However, all of these things make for a richer experience which hopefully comes out somewhere in the work.

^* I have called the trees ‘Tamarisk Pines’, but I’m pretty sure that they are not. One passer-by called them by that name, another thought they were ‘Pencil Pines’. I preferred the sound of ‘Tamarisk’. What’s in a name anyway, apart from the chance to feel lifted by something felt to be exotic, mysterious, poetic?