Paint softens the torn surface. A healing skin? The seascape had to go. Instant transformation of the implied space of a horizon to the ambiguous space of flatness. The original painting using suggestive marks has given way to something more descriptive. There is a preliminary approach to painting that He takes which might be what is meant by ‘expressive’. He paints like a shot-putter. Stuff is launched onto the surface with what turns out to be more hope than judgement. Does hope imply a lack of faith? ‘It’ rides with the frustration that is carried in the act and the mark. A period of enthusiastic scrubbing and dabbing follows until He realises the futility of it. ‘It’ begins to tire and He relaxes into looking and a more considered process. The expressive approach is not the painting but a clearing of shards of feeling that litter the floor of the china shop; the bull is still for a while. ‘More considered’, Safer? The work becomes less resistant as ‘It’ retreats. The wounding of the surface is healed by the perpetrator, neutered perhaps by the process. A tamed painting expresses gratitude.
