Friday, July 15, 2016

There’s time for me yet

Louise Bourgeois, whose twenty-foot spider was the show piece at the opening of the Tate Modern, didn’t find fame until she was in her eighties. At 73 in a few days’ time, there’s time for me yet!

Has luck would have it; I can’t rest on my laurels. Yes, I’ve had a few successes along the way, yet nothing to get complacent about. I still haven’t achieved the vision that haunts my mind’s eye. But I’m still working on it. With my water colours of the female nude I feel that I am almost there and if I can allow my sculptural figures the same freedom...who knows?

I write this with a glass of rum in my hand at the end of a hard working day. Perhaps, as Charles Morris (1745-1838) recommended in his poem The Toper’s Apology, I’ll fill my glass again.

“Tis by the glow my bumper gives
Life’s picture’s mellow made;
The fading light then brightly lives
And softly sinks the shade;
Some happier tint still rises there,
With every drop I drain –
And that I think’s a reason fair
To fill my glass again.

My muse, too, when her wings are dry
No frolic flight will take;
But round a bowl she’ll dip and fly
Like swallows round a lake.
Then if the nymph will have her share
Before she’ll bless her swain –
Why that I think’s a reason fair
To fill my glass again.

It is not often that I’m in the picture, but here I am contemplating the molds for the torso.


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