Nothing is what we thought.

A very simple sentence from the book ‘When things fall Apart’ by Pema Chödrön. And as I read these words so many moments come flashing back. I am one of those people who often look at someone and wonder how they do it. In my early twenties, after a night of partying, I would lie...

why do I draw?

Drawing has been a sort of parallel track through my life, very rarely intersecting with my other ‘real’ life. Perhaps this is a good thing, since the work remains fresh, untainted by any professional requirement or opinion. I’m not an artist and objectively speaking my work is ‘amateur’ but so what? Why do I draw?...

Bits & Pieces II

There are times when You go with the flow, No matter if the current is wild The river is full of thorny logs You go with the flow There are times When the river enters you It is not you and the river It is some mix Of mud and flesh and heart Rushing madly...

forests

I have contradictory notions about the human relationship to the natural world – we are part of nature aren’t we? We are mammals and there is not much difference between us and the rest of them. We have bodies, instincts, we feel hunger and pain and so on. So then why talk of this relationship...

bits & pieces

Collage with ink and brush on ivory board 28 x 28 cm I write as a reflection on my artwork, but the reflection almost seems to overwhelm the artwork. Maybe that’s good, maybe working on a picture helps me think. I am a little uncomfortable about the direction of these thoughts though, or really the...

looking for patterns

There is something hypnotic about constructing patterns using lines and points, constructing triangles and squares and somehow making them all fit in, like a jigsaw puzzle. Every tiny error is magnified as you go long, like retribution for every time you are careless. What is interesting in patterns is the labour of construction, of figuring...

the idiot and i

a story about will and choice ‘Somewhere in the mind a lunatic shuffled a pack of snapshots and dealt them out at random, shuffled once more and dealt them out in a different order, again and again, indefinitely. There was no chronology... The idiot remembered no distinction between before and after. The thirty five years...

the blues

A man in the coonskin cap, in the pig penWants eleven dollar bills, you only got ten (Lyrics from the Subterranean Blues by Bob Dylan) The world keeps asking for something I don't have, or I have it but not exactly that which is asked. And I keep searching my pockets for the 11 dollar...

Remembrance

Sudipto and I were partners in work and life for 35 years, until he left suddenly over a year ago. 22nd of September 2019 to be exact. He left as if he were leaving a party, suddenly remembering some small thing he forgot to do – maybe put off the gas or something similar –...