Paris Star Dream 2006

Jack Armstrong made "Paris Star Dream", an acrylic on canvas, and looking at it I feel like he was in a real hurry, because the colours are smeared around, like he couldn't wait to get them all down. I mean, look at all that blue clotted together under the red drips. You can almost feel him wrestling with the surface. It’s so physical, the paint, like cake frosting, thick in some places, thin in others. The red lines sort of jump out and then disappear back into the background. It reminds me of Pollock, but with this frenetic energy of street art. I imagine him standing back, squinting, adding little dabs of pink here and there. Like, "Oops, need a little more life over there." Painting is a messy, imperfect business, and artists keep responding to one another down the ages, inspiring one another. Every artist leaves something for the next one to pick up. And that's why we're all here, isn't it? To try and make sense of it all, one brushstroke at a time.