Garden fork

One of an open-ended series celebrating tools and cutlery. The ones which are most appealing are made of the sort of materials which age, or wear nicely, developing a patina or shaping to the habits of the user.

In Canada (II of VIII)

“You’ll be here for the eggs?” It was an old woman, grey hair, pink face.

“Yes”, I said. “Eggs”.

“You’ll be from the new houses”, she said.

“Yes”, I said, “that’s right.”

There was a pause. She examined my face. I had to suppress a giggle: it seemed a peculiar process to go through to purchase eggs. I’d seen hand written sign down at the bottom of their drive, then followed a track up tot the farmhouse. The yard was strangely silent and I’d felt this sense of awkwardness as I knocked on the wooden door.

“Well”, she said, suddenly exasperated, “What are you doing standing there. Come in.”

I followed her into a kitchen, a dog looked up for it s basket, came over to greet me- limping on here legs only, then returned to its wicker bed.

“Wait there”, said the woman, I noticed that she too was limping. She looked back for an instant, “how many do you want?”

“How many what?” I thought, puzzled- she sensed that and, surely believing me a idiot, said loudly, “eggs, how many eggs?” She spoke the word “eggs” with a plaintive drawl.

“Oh, just a dozen,” I answered.

“You’re not from here?”

“No,” I said.

“No-one is,” she replied, passing me the eggs in a carrier bag. “Still,” she continued with a laugh, “the more they come, the more eggs I sell.”

*

Coming back down the hill the orderliness of the houses in the surrounding countryside became starkly obvious and it took me a moment to pick out my own rented place from the other identical houses.

Reaching the smooth tarmac of my street, I saw my nieghbour from across the road who was just entering his, identical dwelling opposite mine. I gave him a wave.

“Got any beer there?” He shouted.

“Eggs,” I replied, though I don’t think he heard: he disappeared inside.

I went inside too. I put the eggs in the fridge then sat down. Very quiet.

I tried to watch TV and could for a while, then I worked on an article. A couple of hours passed. Then I got bored and took to staring out the window.

There was a van parked in the street. Usually that was prohibited. Or was it just rare? It was so hard to figure out what was prohibited and what was just uncommon. Canadians were guarded, they had many rules, but they did not mention them. They did not mention them, I thought, because they did not want to appear intolerant.

Anyway, I saw the van there, and though it was late afternoon. I went out to look more closely. It was that sort of place; there were so few irregularities that even a parked van raised suspicions.

I approached the van. The window of the van would down slowly, then a face poked out, a face with a cigarette protruding from it.

It was the guy from across the road. I hadn’t recognized the van.

“Hey, you got a light?”

It was the man from across the road.

“I don’t have a light,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

Wife kicked me out,” he said in a matter of fact way.

“Really, that’s terrible.”

“She doesn’t like it when I drink,” he said, matter-of-factly

“Oh,” I said.

“You not from here?”

“No,” I said.

“No one’s from here,” he said. “You got some beer in this afternoon?”

“They were eggs,” I said.

“Man, I’d die for an omelette. “

I laughed.

“I still got some beer,” he said. “I keep a store here so the wife can’t find it, and he pointed under the seat.”

“You’re very wise,” I said.

“Sure,” he said, “ ‘t’s called learning from experience.”

He gave a big sigh. “So I got the beer, you got the eggs, your place for dinner??”

I’d made my first Canadian friend. His name was Joe.

Some recent gothic photos

Gothic images.

In Canada I (No. I of VIII)

Sarah asked me where I was living and I mentioned that I was renting a house out in V, a suburb some 20 miles from Toronto, She would drive out to get me, to take me to the lake, she said.

She came, exactly on time.

Sarah was the friend of a friend from Brazil, Joeli. Sarah wore sunglasses so I could not see her eyes. She wore a polo-neck, then a v-neck sweater over it. She wore jeans and boots, her manner was brisk, she spoke quickly. She was the manager in an office, but she did not describe what she did. I think she had located her work in one mental compartment, which was distinct and unconnected to others in her mind. I knew that I had nothing to say to her. I knew that instinctively, and it made me feel ashamed, as if her kindness was being rejected unfairly, and that emotionally I was unable to fulfill my part of a contract, the role of the grateful guest...

Sarah was just one person, but she made up a huge proportion of the sample of people I had met there, so making me momentarily unsure that I would have much in common with the people of Canada at all.

She drove efficiently. Her sunglasses made her haughty, they were expensive glasses and one of the lenses had a logo in the corner. There flashed the image in my mind’s eye of my Brazillian friend, and the woman here, and the images did not correspond. Sarah had asked about Joeli politely but it was the civility of a government employee, I could not mistake it for friendliness, and I wondered what duty she might be fulfilling to Joelli. We got to the lake, and parked, and she puit the glasses on the dashboard, but she did not look at me directly and I saw her eyes seemed tired.

We walked along the lake. It dawned on me that I was being taken to participate in a sort of new arrivals ceremony, that Sarah was fulfilling a sort of civic duty, and I wondered if she was returning a duty that Joelli had performed for her: part of a giant international exchange programme, where people took foreign visitors to see certain sites as a sort of initiation ceremony, and in return were taken to sites themselves when they went abroad. Walking there, I could truly say I was in Canada, much as when, staring at a concrete Christ on Corcovada one might truly say one had arrived in Brazil.

Canada was very big- the lake was very big, and Canada was surely full of unspoilt nature, much like the landscape surrounding the lake. And, as we walked I reflected that it would be like this, everything would have this mood, Canada. Such days often carry the air of premonition.

*

When we got to the car the windscreen had been broken. There seemed something excessive about that, as if mere theft was not sufficient- there had to be damage too. But Sarah said that that was probably a drug addict who did not know how to steal simply. They just broke the windscreen and took whatever they could - Sarah's sunglasses were gone from the dashboard.

Style

*

Until a few years ago I believed that an artist should have one style. This was proof of something called authenticity, which I believed was the basis of good art. I believed in authenticity because I was quite serious, and because I had a puritanical streak, and because it was the cultural norm at the time.

This meant that art had also to be difficult, both technically and in terms of comprehensibility.

In the last few years my attitude has changed, however. It's not that my previous beliefs are invalid, it's more that I see the easy possibility of them existing alongside other beliefs- an artist can be playful, slight and entertaining or populist one day, serious and elevated the next.

This is by way of an explanation of the variety of styles and approaches I am using. They each allow me to express different things, and the one does not cancel out the other.

These statements may seem obvious, but it should be born in mind that until Post-modernism really set in - and in Scotland, where I trained, this was not until the late 90s- artists were expected to restrict themselves to one medium, one subject, so that if an abstract expressionist painter in acrylics decided to produce a figurative lithograph this was viewed with some suspicion. I suspect that some of the suspicion was led by marketing concerns- it's much harder to market an artist whose work varies enormously.

But given how little art most artists sell, and I include myself- worrying about providing a consistent product seems extremely vain, to say the least.

Homage to Tarkovsky

Here's a photo that brings to mind some of Tarkovsky's films. I used to love Tarkovsky, mainly for the beauty of the imagery and the way music and images are combined.

I saw his films first when I was 16 through to 22, and they appealed to me enormously. I liked their immense seriousness, and their extraordinary craftsmanship. They seemed both tremendously original, and yet ancient. Then, about 20 years later I saw several of them again.

I could still enjoy the films' aesthetic qualities, but found the reactionary messages in Nostagia irritating and silly. Of the films, the more abstract Mirror then seemed the most satisfing because it avoids the preaching, anti-humanistic tendencies of other Tarkovsky films.

Paintings in progress - stage 6

The detail (middle image) is dedicated to that idiot, Rowan Williams, Archibishop of Canterbury, for allowing his major orifce to dribble continuously, without let or hindrence, filling the air with pungent spume.

I still need to title these two paintings. The top painting (A) is something to do with heroism and I want to pay tribute to Russian writers, such as Bulgakov who have dealt with this theme. The picture owes something to constructivism and art of the 20s.

The second is about fertility. I have considered titles such as "The Garden of Earthly Delights".

If you have any suggestions for titles let me know.