footnote

Breathing of course, and especially the communion of our breath, is at the centre of this body of work.

But I wanted to say a bit about anxiety…

a scream, a yell from deep down crying paint smears

scrieve away at relentless blank

to daub it with meaning

whispering it’s real

feart all the while 

how to breathe

with shadowed breath

as it scratches and splinters     

Now this work is done I have found myself reflecting on Anxiety. 

My most familiar companion.

I think when I started I assured myself that it was all about the global rather than inward preoccupations of self.

But it’s obvious to me now.

Fear, as a state of being, as my constant overvoice, permeates my world view.

It’s there in the way I make marks and use my painty fingers on the surface.

I don’t really remember it being other.

Did I breathe in Fear as I did the scent of grazed fields or seasalted marsh carried in the air?

Now, at least, I am aware of its all-pervading presence and sometimes, occasionally, depending on the way the wind blows, I am able to take a deep breath and challenge its legitimacy.

And then, when I look over my work, I try to minimise the scorn of “self indulgent expression” that I can all too readily embrace. 

I remind myself instead that in the particular is the universal and my state of anxiety reverberates around the planet, the companion of so so many.

I look up at the sky, 

breathe,

connected under the same sky