This was the first time I explored the idea of the image being simultaneously a painted canvas and a 'real' picture (that can overlap and be torn) superimposed on the void. The ephemera of reality, superficiality of life and so on and so forth. The visual idea arose from a part of our lounge, in which I was painting at the time, although the suburban view came from elsewhere. The key to it all is in the word 'meanwhile'.

I had painted a chair similar to this one while I was at college and obsessed with the idea of a chair with nobody sitting in it (being, therefore, truly empty), containing within it a more strongly charged space. So, I tried to paint that space. (This is the sort of thing that happens to teenagers living on their own for any length of time.) I went back to that idea in this painting, both to see what would happen and also because the composition needed it.

It is truly weird painting something again, twenty years later. The time in the middle vanishes.

**There are more notes on the ripped canvas on the Compare Use of Ripped  Canvas Page.