When we see a painting for the first time, or experience any work of art for the first time, we're getting an experience we've never had before. Similar maybe to many other experiences, but never exactly the same. Glancing at a selection of my most successful pieces of the last 3 years I can see that the feelings I've tried to elicit are roughly in two camps, divided on colour lines.
The colour pieces seem hopeful and almost baccanalian in their excess. They seem to have an appetite for life. The black & white pieces are not pessimistic necessarily but they seem drier, neutral; possibly colder than the colour pieces. The duality only strikes me retrospectively, seeing them altogether. I wasn't conscious of this when I was making them. It wasn't planned. I didn't have a 3 year strategy, but I did make conscious choices to limit myself sometimes to black and white. Why did I do that? Every artist has to make decisions about what to leave out. It's interesting to speculate what motivates one decision over another; but not too much.
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