‘Windover One’ (taken from the sailing term wind-over-tide) is a title relating to that source i.e. interactive dynamic forces. It was the first of what has become an unexpected series. It was honest to give it the title ‘Raw Coast’, after all, that is where the idea of the image came from.

Extreme winter wind and rain constantly blasted the studio and I found a splendid location holding on to a rock over seeing the coast under such conditions, but is that really all the story? A sea-breaking rock carried memories of the ruined stupas in Ladakh and many images stored away must have their oblique say.

In earlier statements I have likened myself to a conduit in the middle, and I quickly realised that to identify the painting with particular experiences beyond itself and to place on it other meanings was a false imposition interfering with the unique experience only given by the work itself...

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So to free them I decided to name the rest of the series simply One, Two, Three and so on in the order in which they arrived.

At ‘Thirteen’ I introduced a title ‘Collide’ which allowed me other formal possibilities.

How many painters have struggled to think of a title, after the event?

From an early art school training in the traditional post Renaissance methods of illusionistic space without any knowledge of Cubism or Constructivism and with the domination of Sickert, and the Euston Road group when the set piece diploma life paintings had to be sent to London from all over the country for assessment, it obviously took some years to realise that for me it is the form itself that carries the meaning. PAINTING not PICTURES.

Trevor Bell, 2014