The need to paint is a physical thing that hangs around the nerve endings.. He always wanted to be an ‘artist’. He learned the physicality of painting from ‘Archie’ Campbell, his teacher at school. Archie showed slides of his work, smelled of turpentine, painted in a lovely physical way, no ‘filling in’, no neatness: the way Archie applied paint was formative for ‘Him’. And Lawrence Self, at Art School, whose paintings made His fingers itch to paint, and His mouth water.
A life lived contentedly with itchy fingers and mouth-watering paint ought to suffice and be immensely rewarding. But there are other motivations, love of praise, desire for recognition, status, all the selfish longings, the wish to be bigger, in a bigger world. He is no doubt, (or hopefully?) not alone in living a life that almost wilfully avoids the truth, misses the point. Misplaced modesty too plays its part in mis-shaping ambition. This painting is a kind of doodle on a canvas that went nowhere. It is a scattering of things from His pockets, stuff that He carries around and forgets, a counting of change whilst waiting for the bus. ‘It’ pokes at the sore, “You’re not really an artist. You just want to be seen as one, to have an identity. It’s a romantic idea. You don’t know who you are.” He knows all this. ‘It’ is not telling Him anything that He has not suspected. But His salvation might still lay with the paint.
