even for colour , 2010

Wilson Street Gallery, Sydney

even for colour (with all that colour suggests), I need something else, something more: words. symbols. conceptual bearings. I need to reach into my time. And acknowledge its political necessities. Its spiritual hungers. Its concerns, revelations and gaps. Its poems and ordeals. And, within my limitations, absorb its frontiers of invention and awe.

Who does not wonder, in our 21st century, at the stunning growth of electronic invention and vision? Who does not gasp at the implications of black holes? Who does not weep at the realization of how very small our beautiful blue grape of a planet actually is, in the cosmic scheme of things?

Even an artist, with the mixed-blessing of eyes, will wonder and weep and gasp. Even I, a bargain-hunter of an artist, who would exchange much to be able to help the needy around this wobbly globe, will sigh.

Hope is the angel in my psyche. It sings in all my sighs, with all my observations, understandings, dilemmas. It elasticizes my anger, lightens my load of empathies, and highlights the lingering notion of love, however it is realized on-the-ground.

Do not misquote me here, but I will say that hope and love are the undercoating of this exhibition, invisible but sustaining. Not because I am foolish. My longings are resilient. Nothing is yet calcified. And, with equal darkness and light, one on each shoulder, I can still despair at the madness and misfortune all around me, writ large on every continent, or stinking in the dark and mouldy cracks of terrorism. The traumas of our time would be unbearable, if not for colour, but even for colour…..

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