2013

The American Ex-Pat came from California sat in the library in the children’s area, held a twisted brown stick, a branch from a crab apple tree taken from his garden back home. He had a leather rope around his neck, a turquoise gem at the apex held it in place. Softened face of the elderly, kindly eyes, though remote, already gathering fuel for the departure. Told me he was in the air force, travelled around, then drove an iconic yellow American school bus. It was touching the way he shared his past so freely. Driving the school bus had given him great pleasure. Then he took out his wallet, showed me a photograph of him in his air force uniform standing next to his beloved, so young, so sweet. He called her his darling. Gone two years. I gave my condolences, then my daughter became frustrated. I wasn’t paying enough attention to her. We walked outside to the car park together, he was supported by his polished sienna stick, a fabled ancient root, or blood base of instinct, drawing out of the earth his last wave of dynamism.

Boundary Speak (Diaries 2013-2021) centrally focuses on reportage of my life’s happenings, notes on readings, phantasms or wild forays, riffs off music or footnotes from poems that take me on a strange journey and thought fragments. My outsider artwork is focal on my Re-learn your Alphabet for the Twenty-First Century drawings (some of which are collaborations with my children), my robot series, as well as many other drawings undertaken over the period 2013-2021.