Creating a perfectly decorative surface

The painted surface is its own universe. I pour my life into it, gather my life on to it.

I wanted to paint in the picture a whole that shows everything at once, every thought, all time, every cause and effect. Each brushstroke is a thought that relates to all the others in one gestalt. In eastern philosophy there is the idea of Indras net, where each tie in the net has a jewel, and each jewel contains all the other jewels. Also, when we pull on one part of a net there is not a single mesh that doesn’t move. Every moment in reality contains all other moments, all time and space. Eternity doesn’t go beyond the moment. All things connect with and depend on everything else and nothing exists in isolation.

I wanted to create a perfectly decorative surface with an equal emphasis and distribution of marks throughout. To paint everything, contained in one visual present. Here everything is visible and can be grasped at once in one thought and emotion. I want to be able to sense everything at once. Everything is equally , infinitely precious. Our lives pervade the entire realm of phenomena in a single moment and so my life is contained and reflected in infinity, this infinitely profound and immeasurable beautiful space which is the subject of the painting and the painting itself. Can my life really contain everything else everywhere?

Maybe when I look at this image it sometimes gives me that impression.

Working with very small brush marks allows me to surprise myself, to see and create something in spite of myself. The image changes and surprises as I work intuitively, what I see developing on the canvas gently prompts me in new unexpected directions. Shapes emerge and lines of force are revealed to me. These surprises jolt my consciousness and allow me to see worlds I have never seen before. It is important to find something I have never seen before.

The marks may be callled dots but each one has orientation, direction. The word dot in painting conjures something mechanical, reductive, conforming. Hirst wants his dots to have this quality with the irony that they are all hand painted by his assistants.

These marks must be within similar size range, but always different, never repeating the same angle. Each one is a thought. They have a similar pressure, reach in all directions, left right up down north east south west here there to and fro, curving , squared, italicised, blotched, daubed, sweeping, halting, swelling, rounder, drier, wet, juicier, lean, fat, scratched, strong, tight, loose, good, bad, roughly equidistant. Dancing. Being steeped in the western milieu my thinking is reductive, and maybe my need for these repetitive marks reflect that. But I also want to see the whole from the outside in, like someone from the east.