No more pussyfooting around; no more prevarication: no more caution. I simply have got to get on and produce some decent works of art.
Ideally, in a style that draws from Anselm Kiefer, I am doing my best to relate my mother’s experience to my own. But I need peace and quiet to get on with this. The painting is organised under the heading of ‘Black rose heaven’. (It is a heaven that my mother will have ‘all to herself.’) It is not an idyllic heaven. It is adorned, sparsely, with black-red roses. So far, I have prepared a background and assembled photos, two small paintings (that are self-portraits), some model soldiers and some dried red rose buds. The rose buds will be painted or sprayed black.
Yes: Black-rose heaven.
Post script: The idea of a black-rose heaven is taken from a poem by E E Cummins which begins:
‘if there are any heavens my mother will (all by herself) have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of black-red roses …‘
Go Ask Alice 