Last night I came back to my studio. It was like an Aesop tale in horizontal: Embryonic fleas clinging to my pusscats back, pusscat clinging to my back, me clinging to Humphrey my bears back, he clinging to several Amazon box carcasses, they interlocking with the Guardian, they wrapping piles of my paintings, all of us wrapped in duvet.
An ex-boyfriend wrote in a song:
” Bel’s bed is full of magazines, bras and broken pencils”
The flat dissapointment of a going to a New Years day party. The flatness of a new year and the first day of it and the air of hangover-expecting to feel a sense of recognition with someone-a longing for a lost love or homeland. A neutral, clean and comfortable home.
When I was almost thirteen years old my mother moved to Vatican City Rome to mend Papal robes. My father dissapeared. My sisters were at university. My mother left me a copy of her signature so that I could fake school letters. I moved into Canon Sherlocks house. The Canon had died two weeks previously. The shape of his body still (imprinted) on the ticking sheet upstairs. A well like the dipmade for water in flour for pastry in the mattress. His rubbish was still in the bin, mostly paper and pelargonium heads maybe he had given up eating. Radio 4 was turned down but on. And so I adopted his habits. From a very strict upbringing to no rules at all I started to live like the ninety one year old Canon who had just died. The ship was waiting for a new captain and I was it.
Tinned peaches in syrup next to Birds powdered custard. I made the obvious connection and tried them and liked them. Post war treats for a child born in 1975. I turned the radio up and enjoyed Humphrey Littleton on Sorry I haven’t a clue and several other radio programmes. The Times that came through the door for a while I read over several days. As I did with: Lolita, Pnin, Tess of the D’urbevilles. The cat seemed to accept me as the new master. Drawers and drawers of things-even a table that I thought had false pockets opened and yeilded a set of silver asleep on cobalt velvet beds.
Wine stains on the wall
The rope on by the stairs shiny with grease
Birds custard powder
Peaches in syrup
Radio 4 (turned down not off)
Threadbare cat used to pee by the fireplace guessed it’s name began with E ‘Worm E” in a seven year old engagement diary was known by me as ‘E puss and Mr E’ ever after. I found out that Epuss was calle Edgeware several years after he died. He had brought a copper pipe slow worm in from the compost heap he briefly returned to kitten before the excitement killed him.
Portraits of past Sherlocks-dark etchings with Spaniel ear wigs
Christ in the corner looking down as an out of body experience
Two bedrooms
Walls covered in fabric-only other place Liberty of London (and Indian restaurant)
Cold in the final room and could hear next doors jacuzzi
Airing cupboard-walk in where I did a lot of my English A level essays
Painted on the landing looking out through the diamond windows under the spiders webs, slugs, snails, caterpillars and moths that lived in the overhanging thatch
Apple tree rotten in the garden and a tame fox and pheasant
Antlers on the outside of the shed-brought inside.
The kitchen- not the same.
Lined with paper sticky and rings of Lyles golden syrup Midwinter and Meissen crockery
A man doing The Knowledge on his moped. The heavy push of the gate and his physical memory of the space (Bachelard) Knew this space far better than I. The people that live in Lane End have dreams about other places they have lived as I do about the rooms they are sleeping in. The carpet, The look of the gloss paint on the alcove where the post used to wait to be opened. Bills lying there for months. Estate Agents enquiries, Pizza delivery adverts for years. The Staffordshire Shepherd and girl looking on over to a pastoral Scottish landscape engraved and in glass on the other side of the hall. Now they look toward s a turbulent sea scene a reminder of on my stepfathers heritage: his father was a lifeboat man. Realise the miserable Christmases that happened. My father taking one of our present to the children in the home he ran. My Mason and Pearson hairbrush I had waited for a year to get instantly taken and used by another less fortunate little girl causing me to go hot in the face with frustration.
Damien Hirst’s recent self portrait as model of Picasso’s portrait in his studio wearing nothing but pants: charisma, reports of sexual energy and mystical power; a minatour in his lair George Jamesone is the first recorded artist to be painted in his studio in the 1640s. Powerful and cultured, surrounded by his work and a well chosen group of objects that demonstrate his culture, wealth and status to rival even the famous Antwerp studio of Rubens.
“ it was an apartment turned pigsty…filled with piles of pictures, reams of paper, stacks of books, packages, wrapped models for sculptures, all lying helter-skelter on the floor, everything covered with a thick coating of dust…Except for a few friends, Picasso allowed no one in. The dust could fall and settle wherever it like, without fear of some cleaning woman’s feather duster.”
In conversation with Picasso, by Brassai, on the subject of Picasso’s studio
