"I use the subject as a starting point... the motif itself becomes a vehicle from which I develop the final image. Mass, areas of colour, and a fresh, spontaneous application of paint become all-important as the picture progresses. I usually aim to create a painting which exists in own right, independent of its objective source."

Niel Bally

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Still-life Mexico. Oil on canvas. 81cm X 91cm (32in x 36in)

Movement is an important aspect of this seemingly static arrangement of objects. Niel Bally is fascinated by the effect of moving light, by the way it is reflected off surfaces and by the way in which the surface itself can affect the nature of the reflection. For instance, the reflections in this painting were fragmented by the uneven nature of the tabletop.

The artist also introduces, movement into his painting by constantly shifting his viewpoint. When he was working on this composition, he moved around the subject every few hours; thus, the final image was arrived at from a number of different angles. This painting, he says, has more to do with the act of looking than with the actual objects, and "looking is seldom a static experience. "

Compositionally, this painting is neither abstract nor completely figurative. Niel Bally was aiming at something between the two. He describes the picture as "being primarly concerned with creating light spacefromflat, two-dimensional marks of broken paint. " Space, he says, was created by means of a "paint veil", built up with a variey of techniques that included scumbling, glazing and overpainting, and by establishing areas of opaque colour. He was aware that the paint marks had to be of equal strength so that no one mark would overpower the others and create an unwanted "opening" in what was intended to be a two-dimensional image.

The painting was done on a medium-grey acrylic ground, using a wide seleciion of colours - Van Dyke brown, brown madder, burnt umber, alizarin crimson, magenta. violet, Prussian blue, cerulean, ultramarine blue, sap green, phthalo green, vermilion. Venetian red, Indianyellow, cadmium yellow, lemonyellow, lamp black and ivory black. The artist used a drying medium.

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Green Spotted Bowl. Oil and encaustic on canvas. 83cm X 96cm (33in X 38in)

Niel Bally painted this considered still-life arrangement a few months after returning to Europe from Mexico. The painting was, he says, a direct response to the change of light. In Mexico the light was intense, producing strong contrasts. European light, in comparison, seemed very much softer, a muted grey.

The arrangement of the subject was particularly important here. Because the artist was primarily concerned with light and colour, he spent some time arranging the objects on the table, paying particular attention to the light source and the shadows it produced. He moved the objects around, making several preliminary studies before deciding on thefinal arrangement.

Green Spotted Bowl is not an objective painting. Niel Bally used the subject as a starting point, a vehicle for his own impressions. His aim was to capture the initial, fleeting sensation of colour and light rather than to produce a strictly representational image. Once the subject was established, the artist felt free to change this basic motif, altering the image to make it work pictorially, if not literally.

This still-life was completed in two afternoon sessions. Paint was used both transparently and opaquely. Occasionally the artist dragged or scumbled colour onto the canvas, allowing the underpainting to show through. He also used encaustic - a medium mixed from turpentine and beeswax - mixing this with the paint to make the colours more translucent. Thisprocess also speeded up the drying time of the oil paint, allowing areas to be worked over within a few hours.

Niel Bally worked from a palette of ivory black, Indian yellow, Van Dyke brown, madder brown, alizarin crimson, Prussian blue, cerulean, ultramarine blue, Venetian red and titanium white.

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'Painting Interiors" by Jenny Rodwell. Published by Collins 1989. ISBN 0-00-4115759