Back to basics - black and white

Unable to get out to see an exhibition one grey Sunday morning, I started thinking about one seen in 2006 -- the huge paintings of John Virtue, a landscape artist who lives in Devon and was artist in residence at the National Gallery.

He works only in black and white, and uses a variety of brushes etc to apply paint to canvas.

On his way to his studio at the gallery every morning, he'd stop at various places and do sketches of the urban river landscape. In the studio, he translated these onto canvases 7 x 3.5 -- metres, that is.

"Just" black and white -- you wonder after seeing these why bother using colour. I think that "because it's there" we want to use everything, whereas we should be stripping back to being as simple as possible. As Prokofiev said, "There is still so much beautiful music to write in C major."

And if you're aiming really high: "True perfection exists not when there is nothing more to be put in, but when nothing more can be taken out."