Patrick Heron, R.A. (1920-1999)

My gouaches are not a substitute for the oil paintings. Nor are they preliminary sketches, or means for trying out new colour shapes or configurations of dovetailed colour shapes to feature later paintings on canvas. They are works in their own right: and their quality, in fact, doesn't overlap with the canvases' in many respects. Or so I feel My gouaches have always had this fast-moving fluidity of drawing, and a softness, coming from the watery medium itself, which the oil paintings cannot share. (see Exhibition catalogue, Patrick Heron, Gouaches from 1961 to 1996, London, 2005, p. 5).