It is 18 months since I spent four weeks in the middle of the Australian winter working in the studio at Haefliger's cottage. It's a good time to reflect on it. Just recently a painting I made there, a very small round painting on gold-plated steel, was shortlisted for a contemporary painting prize in the UK and I was asked to give a talk about the piece.

I gave the audience an account of how I got up at four o'clock in the morning to drive from rural Northumberland near the Scottish border to the local airport, flew down to London to catch a flight to Bangkok, waited there for 2 hours before flying on to reach Sydney as the sun was coming up. I jumped into a hire car, drove slowly across the Blue Mountains on a spectacular, sunny day, on to Bathurst and then a further 80 km, across the Turon River, along the increasingly rough track until, quite suddenly it seemed, Hill End and Beyer's Avenue opened up before me. I pulled up by Haefligers Cottage – exotic (to me at least) birds were sitting in the trees, the sun was casting long shadows as it went down, a fire had been lit for me inside.  I sat on the porch, there wasn't a sound.

My audience were entranced by this story of the journey, and of Hill End itself, but I also could see a sign of slight disbelief that it was necessary to travel so far and for so long in order to make such a modest-looking painting, just three inches in diameter. I knew, however, as soon as I entered the Haefliger studio that this was the right place at the right time – and I know that these are the kind of lengths that artists often go to in order to make their work.

Of course, it is also the case with residencies such as the one at Hill End, with their relatively short time-frame, that the initial euphoria falls away and a certain amount of panic sets in. One hurries to want to respond immediately, forgetting for a short while that new impulses and surroundings need to be absorbed, digested and understood a little before anything significant emerges. Gradually that panic too subsides and one can begin to work in earnest.

 
 

  
- Christopher Jones
Hill End Artists in Residence Program participant 2011