A recurring image plays in my head. There is very little I remember of my early childhood, one moment, however, gets replayed again and again. Kindergarten. I remember the street, the modernist style building, the smell of the large pine trees. And then one moment. Pointed to a generously sized piece of paper pinned to the wall, having a pot of coloured paint and a large brush put in my small hand, I make a single downward brushstroke. I’m shocked to see the vertical mark before me. It mirrors my own verticality. Something clicks in my brain about being in a body.
This moment lives in my mind, perhaps elaborated, perhaps not. It can’t be replicated, but it is a powerful force in continuing to find new experiences of ‘body being’. Sometimes that experience is found in viewing the work of others. An out of body experience on seeing my first Polke painting in 1986, a similar trippy-ness on encountering my first Mondrian. Special moments, both.
The daily studio encounters with paint, body, and surface continue. The vertical, the horizontal, and all the fluid movements between, redefine my bodily existence. Forcing me to re-encounter the strangeness of being both body and imagination. The painting. Its presence, my presence. A glimpse of reality appearing somewhere in the gap between.
