Mixed media on board #1
A crack across the structure of the image in
the image itself rather than the backing medium or even the
materials which have been used to construct the
image. The
whole thing is largely over-illuminated; part of it is in
shadow. Blocks
of pigment. The
blue still cylindrical where, apparently, it has been rolled
from the tube on to the reds and yellows before they had
fully dried.
Horse hair worked
in. Hot
cinders.
Fluorescence from a kitchen
light.
Brandy.
Cinnamon.
Hope.
Torture.
Today's news, this worked over with a curry comb or
something rather
similar. A
radio news bulletin which may not have fully
adhered.
Scaffolding
poles. A
mandrake root.
A bishop's
cassock. A
broken plastic
helicopter. A
child's hand. Various mosaic tesserae.
Mixed media on board #2
Black and black and black and black on black,
each black different in tonality. Depths of
black. It
glistens. In
places, thick and undiluted paint; elsewhere, a thin layer
hardly showing the brushwork. Elsewhere still, too white, the black
turns towards grey; beyond that a growing stream of it, of
black, I think, of white, I'm pretty sure; it's hard to
remember, the seems to switch
polarity. Here, just here, you see it, there is no
black; a dawn of grey, a river of whitish running over it
and through it and under it and in
it. White,
everywhere held in by levees of black invisible in the
darkness, the survival of which must be in
doubt. Eye
lands of solidifying moving black interferes
with. One wants
to swim to.
Reach out and touch hold of falling into whiteness
that strong sun
creates.
Phosphorescent
blackness.
Blank white.
Grey mediation.
Speckling dark. Not stars.
Rebus/Cartoon
A bird cage inside a patchily transparent sawn
off shot gun; a bag of rubbish, singing, seeking to escape
the dustbin; a spider pretending to be a fly; a fly singing
songs about the many diseases of flies; a glass ash tray; a
jug full of ice cubes; a chequered table cloth; the shot gun
again; the shot gun goes off; the dustbin follows; the bag
of rubbish calls out to the bird, but the words are
inaudible to us, and the bird responds, equally inaudibly;
it sings of flying along dirt roads between eucalyptus
trees; it sings of resting on a stone; it sings of having no
need to sing and resting contented on the stone; the shot
gun pellets, still in flight, tell it of the need to hunt
and to kill in order to survive; and the bag of rubbish,
still in the dustbin, explains that one should always be
vigilant in order to avoid capture; a fly concurs; the
bricks in a small stone wall concur; the pages of a book
concur; and the caged bird refuses to believe.
I do believe, it sings, inaudibly.
An excavator truck goes past and its shovel
shouts an urgent appeal to the caged bird.
The caged bird denies the existence of its cage
and of the smoking shot gun surrounding it.
The shot gun starts to disintegrate and then
vanishes completely.
You see, the caged bird starts to sing, pushing
its beak between the bars.
A field of grass and wild flowers, and a stream
running at its edge; a line of oil drums in the desert,
marking the border between two kingdoms; an almond falling
from its husk upon an almond tree; a butterfly in flight;
sand trickling from the upper sphere of an egg-timer; a
minute archer firing through the castellations in a glass
ash-tray set in the middle of a chequered table cloth; a
file of cats spreading to check out a deserted farm, hunting
and inquisitive; an execution in the palace yard bodged,
blood everywhere, the executioner being put to the sword in
retrospect; an upright piano with the front off, hammers
moving, strings vibrating, sounding board reflecting, no
sound; flies in a glass jar held up to the light; a
crumbling portal between two empty places; a high-backed
chair; an open window; an English spring garden - in a
picture; an unspoilt landscape - in a picture; a perfect
world - in a picture; a ball - in a picture - rolling down
an uncarpeted internal staircase, moving back and forth
across the edges of the painted areas at the edges; higher
up, a child watches the ball fall, through the bars of a
child gate, with an expression both of upset and interest in
the complex movement of the ball
Three poems