I often return time and again to a small photograph of the room in the Flannan Isles lighthouse taken in late 1900. * Actually, I’ve long lost the photograph but...
I often return time and again to a small photograph of the room in the Flannan Isles lighthouse taken in late 1900. * Actually, I’ve long lost the photograph but I have a memory of it, and can recall its strangeness, and its appropriate sense of presence and absence. The room where it happened, whatever it was. It in this case is a painting, I put in the chairs and tables in and furnish the room until the additions make the original room unrecognisable. I often draw with terrible brushes, the bristles hardened through lack of care so that they are scratchy and unpredictable in the marks that can be made. What do I hope to get out of this? A good painting. What’s a good painting? It’s one that you recognise but are completely surprised by… a familiar strangeness… a strange familiarity. What does it feel like when you see it? It’s like when a goal goes in and you reflexively know if it’s what you wanted or not, like you had no choice in the matter. And it could be a well worked goal, got through hard work or a sudden spectacular screamer, or a flukey accident.
* In his autobiography Salvador Dali decreed that everything about the year 1900 was interesting and mysterious.