A group of friends met one summer to draw and paint. We created a ‘summer school’ in a sunny Bexhill garden. We laughed at lot and worked a lot, too. I sketched several areas of the garden and was particularly taken with a little blue bench sitting under the apple tree.
Apparently one can attach much significance to an empty seat; waiting, loneliness, anticipation of who might sit in it... The subject had caught my imagination a couple of years previously and it was then that I painted the chairs.
The bar stool was painted from a collage and fits neatly into this series. There must be a story or two surrounding an empty bar stool.