On the working palette, colours sit beside one another before they have a place in the painting. A bright passage can look different next to a darker mixture. Traces from an earlier brushload can change a colour at its edge.

This stage holds its own kind of looking. I can attend to a mixture in a small amount, then consider what happens when it occupies more of the surface. The same colour may feel balanced in one proportion and overwhelming in another. Its neighbour changes it again.

I am interested in these adjustments before the composition settles. The palette gives room for a colour to remain a possibility. Some mixtures move into the work. Others stay behind as small tests, useful because they help me recognise what the painting needs when I return to it.