Stain is the second collaborative project, the first being Quadrat, between the painter Clive Walley https://clivewalley.uk and myself. In the case of Stain I took a photo of mine, with which Clive was not familiar, divided it up into pieces and gave Clive a 25 x 25 cm print of a random piece with no indication of location or orientation within the whole. Clive painted a 25 x 25 cm version of the photo: this was not to be a slavish copy, but rather inspired by or a variation on the photo as the mood took him. Clive then gave me the painted version in exchange for the next piece of the photo, and so on. In addition to the photos on each occasion I lent Clive some music to play while painting, the musicians included: Dayme Arocena, Bokante, Alice Coltrane, Celia Cruz, Yissy Garcia, Omara Portuondo, Billy Holiday, Nina Simone, Rokia Traore, Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington. The original plan was that this work would form part of an exhibition, perhaps one in which the public could interact with the artwork through assembling the pieces into their own versions. However, the successive lockdowns put paid to that for the time being and also reduced our creative meetings to frustratingly distanced ones. A book illustrating this collaborative project has now been published; see "About" for the link. Paintings: Copyright © Clive Walley; Photographs: Copyright © John Beeching.
