This poem that appeared in Saturday 2nd May Guardian makes me want to find a Chinese bowl and some persimmons to draw. The message is so in keeping with the attitude I have about drawing as a way of fixing something... similar to what my friend Jeni Smith says about keeping a journal. What do you think?
Persimmons
(for Tom)
you must've
loved those three globes of gorgeous orange
dense and glowing in our winter kitchen
enough
to put coloured-pencil and biro to the
reddest page left in your rainbow sketchbook
and make this drawing of
three persimmons in that Chinese bowl.
the supermarket flagged them up as
this season's sharon fruit
but we prefer persimmon (for
didn't it seem the rose of
their other name
would neither taste or sound as sweet,
would be a fruit of quite
another colour?)
such strange fruit ... we bit and ate,
enjoyed.
before we did you drew them.
- oh you'd say so what ?
(drawing, to you, is as everyday as apples)
but I know
they'd have come and gone like Christmas
if you'd not put them down
and made them worth more than the paper
they're inscibed on - see
those deft strokes of
aquamarine and white that
make our table-top lie flat, the fruits
plump out real and round and
perfectly persimmon-coloured
upon their lilac shadows in the bowl's deep-
still life
still life, sweetheart, in what's already eaten and done with.
now, looking, I can taste again.
Liz Lochhead
In terms of drawing I haven't made enough space to do it regularly (again). Last night I was particularly tired but caught a glimpse of these three swans that my mother (rather tongue in cheek) collected for me because I wanted to bring an object back with me from my trip that I took there - to celebrate/commemorate/remind me. Swans are what I observed most, so it seemed to be the obvious reminder.
I include the sketch as an invitation to everyone to send us more examples of what you are creating. It is the sort of thing I would probably tear out of my sketch book so I wouldn't have to look at it any more... but something is better than nothing and who knows where it will lead?
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