Price : A figure once occurred in my mind; correction, three figures, like the silhouettes of eggs, coming in towards the centre of the surface. They were dark. They were gigantic, and they got stuck in my mind. One day I took a canvas out of the plastic wrap and I rapidly drew the three silhouettes onto the linen, just as they had appeared in my mind. Then I turned the linen canvas towards the wall as I was working on something else. Some weeks later I started to work on these forms. I didn’t know what they represented. First, I made the small shape down on the left. I think the idea was to make them quite different, but as I made the two others on the same day, using much of the same paint and with indigo as the ground colour, all three got dark. I had laid a border of indigo paint along the edging line. Not too big. When I left the studio that second day with all the giants mainly done, I was quite satisfied. And I was disappointed when I came back the next day. The borders were overrun by the indigo mixture. And it had to dry before I could paint the lighter blue in between. I made some small coloured fields, some inside the “giants” and some outside. I thought of water buffaloes with birds grooming their heads. I think there are fish in the ocean who do the same for whales. The colour between the big shapes revealed itself to me. The idea of whales crept into my attention. And I was surprised by how long that has escaped me!