Heyla - so lets nitpick with words a little - we must - it's part of the parcel I'm trying to 'teach' and part of the parcel that you will give and take within, as we misunderstand each other - and as I overly explain. like two submarines down in the dark, echoes pinging, knowing their close, but in the end dense shodows slipping by - that is the nature of the dialogue.
Angie - why is the painting better upside down - why is it better?why, is it better??? You know an awful lot about language and poetry - so why is it better??? the other way up?? - I certainly think it is.
I'll tell you -: it's about Import: it's about taking responsibility for the small and the very small things in ones poesy. Ones paintings - even if the answer is the truthfull -'It was the only colour I had' THAT, is what one stands with, and stands behind - the simple truth of the thing, the occams razor of it - which is indeed what you have told.
But HOW do you create from there: and that is what i've been talking about really even within 'words with Angie 1.'
What is it that makes the difference between something and nothing. If one does not stand behind the work - in the end how can it stand -and it's not about being verbose, big headed or upfront about it. When I was touting my folio around literary and illustration agents, I only had to be one thing: smiling and well presented. I open the folio, and it speaks for me as it will - no ammount of book reading - fancy philosophy - or persuasion will do: the work has to stand on its own.
The same with painting, it will speak for you as you really already know, but perhaps are afraid of the implications, or of people seeing a naive side of you, or the poetry of it. Most people don't understand that so much is laid bare - y'have to let them have their say and let it go.
It's not so much about the painting or oneself either - it's about that word - responsibility - the responsibility to others to be direct, serious, happy, fun,clear, and to stand by ones professed love. Art, Society, The Individual, Ritual, Relationship, Nature - in all this one can say, THIS is what I do and is the greater part of me as a human being.
Not in so many words but with that understated power of the image that speaks to others and thru ones own silence and it's own silence, it will, if one works have presence. Presence can ideed meet presence - this is the wager on qualities of trancendance that Steiner talks of. All within the wider philosophical question of what are we ruddy here for anyway? As Dylan T. said ' For the wages of the secret heart' It effects people in their deeper silence - and we try and banish silence.
One walks it and talks it - but in art - as usual silence is the better part of colour. That seems a good quip to finish off a fairly rambly piece Angie - but I know you'll get most if not all of it.
Thanks for the African Writing Mag, will pass on news of it and the word n visual artists to Antonio Brito, a 2nd generation Cape Verdi Islander who lives down the Docks in Cardiff - but we've since learned to call it the Bay. He is a sculptor, photographer and perhaps will look into trying to organise some kind of exhibition at Butetown History and Arts Centre. I don't know, but sometimes I bump into him where I often catch a full English Breakfst - yea - the covered market that used to be a womens prison.
OK - I'm fuzzy......that's it....I can't edit it anymore....
Hey! a bottle of merlot is always a good idea. Much love - Dai.