This is what I had in mind. I was mildly interested in Zen and tried to read a bit about it and was starting to be influenced by and take an interest in the work of Clyfford Still, Franz Klein, and to a certain extent Motherwell, and also Japanese art - the use of empty space.
Japanese art very often had an unstable composition. It looked as if they were in the act of becoming something else, whereas western art has a little more of a triangular centre of interest. So I had all those things as part of my psyche, plus a certain amount of interest in the action painter Jackson Pollack, and somebody else called Georges Matthieu, who would just attack a canvas trying not to think or be intellectual about it and just let it escape. The idea was to get the feeling in you and let it come out, using quick strokes and action and knowing just when to stop. Well that's what I did with this one. I pushed it as far in that direction as I had ever gone with really thick paint on the palette, and sometimes using a knife, sometimes using a brush.