Landscape painting gives an artist like me the opportunity to have a special kind of dialogue. Firstly this dialogue involves the act of looking. Generally it takes some time to really see what a view is offering. Patterns of light and colour together with a sense of space are usually what fascinate me the most, but why a landscape wants to be painted is difficult to really pin down. It might be something you associate with the place or a sense of harmony and form, or it may be simply that you happen to be there. It is only through the process of painting however that the landscape takes on its final character and where the dialogue becomes most interesting. Possibilities and unexpected discoveries show up along the way. Some are a puzzle and some delightful but in the end all are completely necessary for the painting to exist in the way it does.