Notes on an exhibition

I sit in front of my paintings and remember what made them.

That day…that day. Trousers hitched, wading through the river mud, banks spilled over. People laughing at the state of it, the sound carried around the valley’s bowl . Climb the hill, chest a red box pounding, follow the chalk path slipping away from your feet. Light through a gap in the white, between pebbles, between boulders. Always the chalk.

Glimpse a beyond, wonder where the path is. These are old places. Are the ancestors still here? Hiding behind the trees; Boo! to the unheeding. Remember us. Remember your ghosts. Ghosts of the land and the rivers and the cliffs.

That day. Tears and rain. Sun pocking the hills. Heart a red box. Empty voiced, full headed. Shh. Please shh.

Fingers claw through tiny stones, pull of the sea, rubbling of pebbles, eroding the chalk to nothing but powder, holes in the landscape, gaps in the trees. Space to let the light pour in.