"Spring Pattern"
Watercolour
app. 24 x 32 cm
US$ 100

I love patterns, and there's something fascinating about painting them. You start on it like a climber starts his journey up Mount Everest, without knowing if it will be a success. Halfway through, you know that it could be a success, if all goes right and continues the way it's been going - a precarious balance. When you're filling in that last pattern piece, it's an enormous rush of victory and elation.

This patterned cloth looked so lovely with my trusty model Josephine and a vase of purple tulips that I just had to try. Going round the corner to do the pattern in perspective on top of the table was the biggest gamble I had to take. Painting is an activity that resides somewhere between joy and fear.