the darkness

Amazingly...I have been painting in fairly monochromatic colour schemes over the last bit. The latest is syrupy dark black sepia coloured ranging into white and black with grey. 

The other day I did a painting and low and behold....GREEN appeared. It was kinda scary. It intrigued me and felt rightly wrong and lovely all at once.

Over the years, most of what people say about the work I do is "it is so dark", or "you should use more colour" or blah. Well, interestingly the colour that I always have used most of is white and black you only need bit anyway. I was reading about the Austrian artist Hundertwasser the other day....here's what someone said:

"...black is not the same as darkness, black is a vibrant colour fully the equal of any other hue. Darkness, rather, is the depression of the colour scheme to the lowest values...abscence of colour is not the same as lack of light". 

Hundertwasser had a psuedonym or philosophy of 'dunkelbunt': dark colourful or "a darkness consistning of the greatest possible concentration of saturated colours, glowing out of an endless depth..." 

So there...a huge sigh of colourful relief and validation that the darkness illuminates....which reminds me of the black feathers of crows. They are black and full of all colour, but secretly underneath the down feathers of all crows is white.

opening the door.

I have a friend with whom I share a book. We write in it and then send it across oceans, to read and muse over and send again.

It is a beautiful process of boomeranging.

Anyway, one day I had some people over and was sharing something I had written in the book with some strange folk from Tasmania. Low and behold, next day there was a word written lovingly inside the front cover that had not been there earlier.

Duende.

One word. It mystified me for at least a month, but was happy to let it mysitfy me, cos it felt familiarly familiar. So anyway, amazingly it gives a voice to the force which thus has been unexplainable. The strange concept which is not a concept but a space that leaves you somewhere else....that is where it, I, you possibly dwell.

There is no literal translation. English is so restrictive and limited.

Here is what someone said about it (though the Spanish poet Lorca wrote about it too):

[So, then, the duende is a force not a labour, a struggle not a thought. I heard an old maestro of the guitar say: ‘The duende is not in the throat: the duende surges up, inside, from the soles of the feet.’ Meaning, it’s not a question of skill, but of a style that’s truly alive: meaning, it’s in the veins: meaning, it’s of the most ancient culture of immediate creation.]

Someone else said:

[The duende….Where is the duende? Through the empty archway a wind of the spirit enters, blowing insistently over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unknown accents: a wind with the odour of a child’s saliva, crushed grass, and medusa’s veil, announcing the endless baptism of freshly created things. ]

This is the house in which I live.

love.LINVS. IIIIIIVVVIIIIXXXXXX

here are some of the latest...but they have all changed a bit

all a bit sad in this here two worlds lately

and my work is tough

dark, messy, sorrowful

and yet i hope there is some love

something that makes us all remember

to love

that struggling and pain is love

that it makes us tougher

and we never really know what effect we have on anyone

that even a glance can make us better

that even a smile can bring hope

even a black mark upon the soul can help us cry out

for love

a thousand words fly out

a thousand words spoken

for love

the hardest and most honest journey.....

apologies for my sorrow

gotta keep it real

hey India if you read this I havn't forgotten our swap!!

Am in Adelaide in Sept...dark scratchy stuff for you witch!!

xx