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Upstairs.My next newsletter will come from Johannesburg. I shall be in the Upstairs Gallery most of the time for 10 days, and I hope to see a bunch of old friends. If you haven't been invited yet, you are now. The yellow violin.
Tayo was modeling for me. She is a student at the Waldorf and for her final project, she had chosen to build a violin from scratch, using a kit from America. We talked about the secret varnishes of Stradivarius and Amati, which are reputed to enhance the tone of the instrument. "Not really," she said, "The function of the varnish is really to protect the wood. The richest sound comes from the natural, unvarnished wood." "I have to hear this! Is it possible to string the intrument before it is varnished?" "I might have to. We are presenting our projects to the school soon, and the varnishing process is a long, slow one." On Friday the students presented their projects, and at the end of the evening, Tayo presented her violin, a funny looking instrument, a kind of custard colour, matte in finish, but with all the strings in place. "When a violin is born," she said, "It does not yet know that it is a violin. It is only when it has been played a few times and hears its own voice, that it finds it own personality, and this is still a baby violin; it is only, um... what time is it now?" Then a friend of hers came up and played a few bars on this strange yellow violin... just a few bars, and faltering, but of such purity, I felt the tears coming, as they always do in the presence of imperfection. Driving with paintings.On Friday I'll be driving from Cape Town to Johannesburg with about 25 paintings in the back seat. The last time I did something as crazy as this was in France... well, France and Holland and Belgium and the UK. Anne nearly had a fit when I bought an old Citoen on the freezing sidewalk in Amsterdam, a car which the owner promised us, ran on gas. It did, and it carried us from Holland to Paris, and then to Chartres, where I collected my paintings from a gallery, and on to Calais. The customs officer at Calais was not to sure of this business. He was faced this old station wagon, paintings up to the roofline apart from one corner, which housed a weird gas storage unit. Oos paintings are these? The are mine. Look, you can see my signature, here, and here. And what is the value of these pictures? Well, I tried to calculate... The value is zero, until I can find a gallery to sell them. He laughed. OK, then, go ahead. The ride on the ferry was nothing compared to driving from Dover to London. Congested roads, repair work everywhere and crazed drivers throwing themselves into traffic circles in a way that made the Arc de Triomphe a Sunday drive... And me in a left-hand-drive car; blindsided. The London galleries I had written to were unhepful, virtually hostile, and we undertook the dangerous drive into the Cottswolds on black ice, but the thing that nearly killed us was freezing fog. Barreling along a narrow country road with a massive truck right behind us, in one second the windscreen turned white. Solid white, the wipers stuck in ice. And behind us, the psychopath in his juggernaut. I could not stop, nor even slow down, so I rolled down my window and stuck my out head, a motorcyclist's reaction, and drove onto the grass verge, the truck screaming past. Once we had started breathing again and washed down the ice, we moved on to Burford. The scenery was exquisite, every tree, every branch an ice sculpture. It was the day before Christmas and two young girls on violin and flute were playing classical carols next to the park. We listened and then moved on to the gallery of Brian Sinfield. One of the nicest people in art, Brian runs a wonderful gallery, an Alladin's cave showing the work of Bernard Dunstan, Ken Howard, Fred Cuming, and for a few glorious years, mine as well. When eventually we got back to Amsterdam, it was minus 12º, and our houseboat was frozen solid. God, I love travelling! An angel, with wings.I did not always love Italy. My first week in Rome and Florence, 30 years ago, was miserable and my dreams of beauty and romance lay in ruins around my feet. It was so bad that I decided to take a flight to Paris immediately, now with genuine fear that the same fate awaited me there. Looking out upon the bleak runways and baggage handlers. I pulled my sketchbook from my bag, my only company, and started to draw the airport activities. An air hostess went past and checked that my safety belt was secure. "Can I see what you are drawing?" she asked. She sat down next to me, this Italian girl, and looked through my sketches. When the plane taxied to take off, she did not get up, just fastened her seat belt and commented on the drawings. That entire flight she stayed with me, talking, and stitch by stich knitting my broken soul. I arrived in Paris whole and happy, and sure of the simple goodness of life. I never asked for her phone number and cannot remember her name, but she rescued me and opened the door to art. |
In this issueWebsiteWorkshopsFor details on workshops and classes in Cape Town and Europe, click here ArchivePrevious newsletters. If you know of anybody who might enjoy these letters, please forward this one to them. You can forward up to five copies. If you would like to subscribe to this newsletter, simply reply to this email, and I shall add you to my list. |
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