I have just stretched up my most recent paintings. Nine new works which were started in the early Spring. Three of them: "This Way Up", "Jump" and "Tick Tock" all feature in my book on "Abstract Art and Abstraction: They have a new attention to line with a number of looping linear passages working their way through the painting, enclosing or opening up around and about passages of colour. - sometimes locking in colour "chords". The surfaces are richer in variety than the past few years work. I have been exploring degrees of opacity to give my colour a greater deal of expressiveness. All of these paintings are vertical in proportion. This shape initially intrigued me for its awkwardness, but I now enjoy the proportions and the way the paintings address a viewer - a sort of human proportion. I find them more direct in colour (my intention) and also in scale. Some of the lines weave and wind their way through the entire painting , other times in sections changing direction. The lines themselves have various colours (black is used the most) though what looks like black in some are in fact dark hues upon closer inspection. I am varying the surfaces of the lines too, with some being stained in softly to others having a more opaque quality. One other characteristic is the way colour is applied - into other colour, which can temper, tune and amplify it. The employment of both lateral and centrifugal colouring has been important in driving the work into bolder configurations. I have spent a great deal of the year working and reworking this paintings and will post some sequence images soon of a couple of works which will show some of the decision-making at play.