Wednesday 29 June 2016

No politics or religion at the table please.

Pick pick, the farage kite
tears soft underbelly
from an upturned 
sheep too gorged
to stand.

Blood red pudding
spills on a white tablecloth.
It pools in silver spoons
as much as it drips from formica.

Pick pick. Lie

Lie. Until the red guts of
‘well you’re out’
come spilling out.

And redcurrent clots
and stains Ikea’s pure bright worktop
and walls of elephants breath 
and chalky downs.

Pick pick, tear.

Divide.

My sweet ‘england lost
‘forever friend’.
Clotted, blood red pudding.
You have a bitter taste today.

Monday 13 June 2016

Drawing from life

Drawing from life, an unconscious reaction to form - written in the life room today 13th June 2106.



 

  


Like a race horse needs oats, it’s fire, I need drawing to put a light in my belly. But it’s also calming, it narrows the options on the day, straightens the path.

To start the week with drawing signposts me in the right direction, it tells me that the new bathroom is less important and the accounts can wait. It puts back in the cupboard all the things that tend to spill out all the time and take over and quietens a discombobulated mind.

Just as the air becomes too stuffy, to hot to think, drawing is like rain. It cleans and it nourishes.

Representational, reactional drawing you have to approach with respect, you can’t fake it, you can't be clever. Humility in learning is the correct approach. It brings you back down to reality and of course, it makes you see everyone is beautiful. The wobbly bits are life’s adventures, the stains on the flesh are years of summers. Youth’s lean smooth forms have an attraction but history has layers and stories.

After the excitement of my London solo show, the work and the drama of it all, today I return to the life class and it feels like magic. But then of course it is not. That time in front of the model, that 1 minute or 5 minutes of drawing is a reaction in time, never to be repeated. Hand to eye, that look, that seeing, just then, captured on the paper.

Magic.

But of course its not, its better than magic, its craft. It’s learnt, it’s practiced. And like the deceiving hands of the magician it’s quick in execution because of thirty years of practice, thirty years of interest, thirty years of craft, graft, in front of life.

….and then just as that vanity talk rises in my head I ruin a drawing with flippant arrogance, punished, I get back down again. But I smile with the joy of it.