I start each painting with high hopes. The pristine canvas, tidy puddles of paint on a clean palette, brushes at the ready. The sketches and the reference photos are laid out, the lights are adjusted. And so I begin another page in my visual journal.

After a couple of hours, I find myself on artistic black ice, slowly slipping out of control: I'm intending to go one way, but the painting is taking off in another. I go in the house to start supper. Later, glass of wine in hand, I'll go back out to the studio to survey the damage. I photograph the day's work and put it on the computer.

Even later, I return to the darkened studio, switch on the lights, hoping for a miracle. Sometimes it's not as hopeless as I thought; other times I wonder, "Who painted this?" But, in hindsight, having ruined some pretty good starts, I resist "fixing" any painting after 8PM. Put down the brush. Step away from the painting,

Tomorrow, I tell myself, with fresh eyes I will reignite the fires of inspiration I first felt for this scene, and, in the poet Vita Sackville-West's words, "...clap the net over the butterfly of the moment."

For further information or to purchase one of Judith's works, please contact Dolores, our artist relations manager or Judith

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