Draft for 'Standing in front of a fan' (will be acrylic on canvas)
'Pint by the Window' (acrylic on cavas, first in a series of pub scenes)
New Park, Old Faces Must Go
They cried out the day she was taken,
Despite the fact only the crows would sit by her and on her.
She was a hundred and one years old, wrapped in snakes, a proper Medusa,
Tendrils hung from her like grotesque, extra limbs, all grit and grease,
Warped and eaten by weather.
She pinned for better, summer days –
Lax by then in her hatred of the world, stony as maybe;
She was husked out like a beaten wasp or an airless sky;
She would sit and face the blast
Cradling herself against anything further,
And pitying the carver who killed herself over her.
Shop
Places in front of me
I enter a door
And drop my coat and remove my shoes
Skulls line the walls
And I search for the toys I want the most
I spot the boat at the bottom of the shelves of other things
And I have a moment just holding it,
Cradling it in the folds of my dress, my waist exposed,
I have no feeling in me other than this.
I go to the fish tank and push the ship out
And I laugh
As the little person in it smiles up at me.
I have been working on this week, and and am working on today, poetry and drawings. I draw and then I write, this really seems to work, the process makes the drawings and the poems fuller. I don't really plan what I am going to draw, I just draw and then the idea of what to write comes, and that in turn develops the images.
Something about the combination of art forms seems to make art a fuller experience; this is how I would like to exhibit and collaborate with other artists. Have just found out that I am going to be part of a working exhibiting space along with other artists in the Temple Cowley area of Oxford in the next couple of weeks ... my plan is to get collect words and poetry fragments from vistors, inviting them to draw them on the wall follwing on from each other, and then I'll respond and add to them visually until there is an end piece connecting audience and artist. I don't know what we'll end up with, but it will be a purely creative experiment in development and creative empowerment. Details to follow...
More images for a personal odyssey, and poem promised -
Ballerina
In the cold I light up,
Feeling bitter glow and stinging of warmth in the mouth,
Hands shaking slightly in the contrast of outside to in.
My shoulder blades bare lean into rough brick, a moment -
I can feel them grazing slightly as I breath deep
The scent of sweat and cigarette.
I am stretching my legs, just a moment -
But back through the door to the slowness
Of movement, purity and rousing sound,
To saying nothing at all.
Young Girl
The Marrying Kind
Outside the Club
On the Bus
In the Boudoir
Asleep
It was dark and I was walking
It was dark and I was walking, cigarette in hand, along the street.
Shops hummed in sleep, street lights streamed and beamed above.
It wasn’t cloudy, the night was smooth, and the smoke rose
To mingle with the air.
I pulled up my hood and wiped my nose on the back of my hand, and then saw
Red and wet and raw,
The blood that had flooded my nostrils and had started to stream
Steadily down between my
Fingers, to pool on the floor.
