So why paint?

I heard that recently someone achieved a first class degree at an London art school with a painting of white colour on white canvas with some conceptual title, which unfortunately I can't remember, which is a shame because therein lies the "art" of this work. Provoking the viewer with the their own subjectivity has been going on since Duchamp's "Fountain" 1917. We are coming up for the centenary of this challenge to the viewer; maybe this gag is wearing thin for some of us?

To understand why our culture has no shortage of "fountains", I recommend Hans Abbing's "Why are Artist's Poor? The Exceptional Economy of the Arts". This excellent book discusses, amongst other things, how subsidy money from governments and old-money patrons influences the type of art produced in a country. It is not a coincidence that most of the painters I've learned from - old school "traditional" art - are British and US American. It is also true that the art market is flooded with artworks and artists. And the ratio of winners and losers is not a statistic most of us would bet our lives on in a sober state.

Despite this, some of us feel we want or have to paint. Walking out on a track, with no one about, in between some fields, early in the morning, today after weeks of grey skies and rain, there is hazy sunshine. There is a prescient green perfume in the air. The hawthorns are starting to shoot. The birds think it is worth singing. Some puffy cumulus float by - time does not stand still. But you know this moment will be gone - perhaps only the feeling will remain in our memory, if that? So do we try, Faust-like, to fix the moment and say "yes, please stay"?

Knowing that we will fail, we calmly unpack our clumsy oil painting gear, trying not to disturb the thrushes. Already the sun is rising, the haze is lifting, and we start.... An hour and half later, one emerges from the intense concentration of trying to capture the light, the smells, the sounds, the change of light, perhaps even the gradual opening of the leaves, and the sense that one's own breathing is part of the scene and looks at a small 10 x 12 inch canvas - to find it wholly inadequate. Even last year's dried up leaf by the trackside seems to have more beauty and art in it than the oil sketch. But emerging from this committed attempt is a renewed sense of the wonder of being alive in this complexly indifferent and at times beautiful world. See the painting "Spring near Aldeburgh".

And yet hours, days, years later something in that painting reminds me, and I think others, of that spring morning?