"I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom. I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients." Gustave Courbet

08 September 2024

Memory.


My love of words stems from my school days and many inspirational, informal English classes where poems and prose were deconstructed, analysed and re-understood.

That inspiration took me down many wonderful roads and I found, quite naturally, that from the ensuing torrent certain fragments stuck and became embedded in my memory. This continues to be the case.


As in my watercolours and etchings, there is no definable plan. It may be an instinctive search for clarity and image – something profoundly simple, produced, hopefully, with precision.

In these attributes etching, watercolour and poetry have much in common.


W. H. Auden sums it up beautifully:
                             …to give a stunning
display of concinnity and elegance
is the least we can do, and its dominant
mood should be that of a Carnival.

or Allen Ginsburg:
A naked lunch is natural to us
We eat reality sandwiches.
But allegories are so much lettuce.
Don’t hide the madness.
Norman Ackroyd

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