I was thrilled to hear this morning that this painting, the Bird My Brother, has been selected for this show.
Here are some pictures from my talk at Arusha Gallery (Edinburgh) last Sunday:
I spoke about how I need to be awake and attentive in my working practice. How I need to pay attention to the surface I am working on, and be prepared to enter into a conversation, and to watch for tiny signs to help me, and listen attentively. I need to practice constancy. I spoke about my garden, how I grow plants from seed in the greenhouse. I spoke about the dark soil of the garden, and the dark soil of my pictures, from which I coax things to emerge, and nurture them into maturity and fruitfulness.
When in Edinburgh I found a book I’d been wanting to read, the Earthsea Trilogy by Ursula Le Guin. I like this passage very much:
“From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.”