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.