Having trusted my life’s work to every type of paper - from cheap
news-print to the finest all-rag - I have come to the conclusion that it is one
of the most permanent materials known to man.
My water colours have survived storms at sea and hurricanes on
land. After forty years they are still
intact, which is more than can be said of my files on celluloid and the
contents of my hard-drives. For safe keeping,
my daughter claims to have put the contents of my present hard-drive “on a
cloud”. Sixty years ago, the comedian
Bob Newhart would have had a heyday with that one!
Nevertheless, when a painting finds a buyer, the only means
by which I can keep a record is by way of the camera. In my early days it was a 1930’s large format
bellows, then a Kodak 35mm and now, a miniature digital Cannon.
Yesterday, I came across a CD upon which, years ago,
I had copied some rapidly deteriorating colour slides. And lo and behold, upon it were some
paintings that I had almost forgotten about.
Sometimes, after a gap of twenty-odd years, I hardly
recognize my own work. For second it
takes me by surprise and I am tempted to say, I wish I’d painted that! Now it all comes back to me and I remember
that I had only a few minutes between tropical downpours to capture this street
scene on Grenada. I trust the original
is still intact upon someone’s wall.
No comments:
Post a Comment