When Richard Godfrey died in 2014, I, and many others, lost a very special friend - such a life-enhancing, warm-hearted, well-loved man, and a brilliant artist and potter. His funeral coincided with the winter solstice, and I began this painting as a fairly literal idea about the sun and the lengthening days. I showed this painting at a studio exhibition, then put it to one side for a couple of years.
Recently I decided that the painting failed to show what Richard and his work was all about - his wonderful technical skills and designs, his feel for bright colours, his love of life - so I started again on the same canvas, using the existing textures, and some of the colours. The end result seems to me to be a sort of amalgam of his work and mine, and I'll settle for that.
