We’re looking at Turner in my weekly art class, in the context of climate catastrophe; forest fires, flooding. He didn’t follow the rules and did whatever took his fancy. Layer upon layer, ignoring fat over lean, whiting out. A conservator’s nightmare.

We started off by looking at some imagery and then, without any further reference to it, got to work. We put down a ground with acrylic paint and then applied layers of thin oil paint and solvent with a rag.

It wasn’t a conscious decision, but I ended up using a very limited palette of cadmium red light, cadmium yellow, ultramarine blue, burnt umber and some white. Once the thin paint was dry we applied glazes on top. I did a lot of wiping on and wiping off – it seems to be my modus operandi, as well as doing a lot of scratching – not particularly Turneresque, but never mind.

What do I think of it? As a study of an imaginary forest fire à la Turner, well, I think I’ve done ok. I’ve managed to create lots of layers and there is definitely some optical mixing going on. I think that I’ve managed to keep it quite loose (for me, anyway). I enjoyed putting the glazes on, colour was caught in the marks and grooves in lower layers which had been made when I had loosely put down the ground. I like that it was out of my control to a certain extent.

At the end of the day, I don’t like it. It was an exercise which I completed, I haven’t invested any of me into it, and it doesn’t do anything for me. But that doesn’t really matter because it is about trying different things, being open to new approaches and trying them out with an enquiring mind.

Putting paint on and wiping or scratching it off is something I instinctively do – it’s a very tactile way of working, and I’ve realised that it’s all about the materiality and the dialogue, which seems to be a bit of a tussle at times.