When I dare to bare,

Art the forbidden fruit, to partake at weekends or between sundown and sunset. The hidden object of my desire is to be brought into the light when others relax and have fun. Shame, embarrassment.

When I dare to put a word on paper, a line on a canvas, reorganize my studio it is in a world dark outside curtains pulled, people are at ease and relaxing and I as a thief in the night set up and get to work. Except on Wednesdays when my diary reads study day, permitting myself to get my artwork on the table on a weekday. Usually, the week is for my writing and, at weekends I take my paints for an airing. Why so cagey, precious?

Art that grows under a bushel, gets done, evaluated, and often binned without an airing. How does it grow? As a back garden that is never shared. A love that is never whispered and left to rot by itself. Secretive self-doubt.

The secret mystery of my life. Lack of courage or encouragement or worried about the philistines ready with their swords of words to demolish me. There is a world out there, but this is my life. In the evening, I get settled in the quiet of my studio and smile and I find happiness and peace

Or is art a bit like a love story that is only mine? Masturbation is taken to new heights. Pleasure seeking and find in those evening alone with my pens and papers and paints. I do not share. I do not mention it as I want this time to be only mine. To get through tomorrow, I need the quiet and meditation that my art has become for me. A journey of discovery of myself and then what was ailing and stopping me to grow.

I now have a life outside my four walls, and I am proud of what I achieved out in the cold, but it is through the time spent here that I walk out with my head held high. Art can be a secret time. A love that is not ready to speak its name. A time too selfish to share and take out in the cold wide world.

By keeping it close to my heart, I find true pleasure and joy in it. The perfect relationship. Each piece I start is as the beginning of a new moment of discovery. I draw a line on paper as I draw a line on your body in Chinese black ink or colourful crayons, cheap black pens. In the beginning, it is all new and we smell each other, talk to each other but keep a safe distance, opening up as we go along if the moment is the right one, you have no name. We grow together. You tell me your name or not,… if you have been created nameless.

Don’t talk. It is too new and fresh. Enjoy it, play with it, accept it. If I talk, I might kill the momentum off before it has started. Before I had time to write a second word, bring forth another idea. Destroy some of its power by refusing to accept its reality.

Art does not need words to describe it. Art just is and creates its reality. In the moment of creation who speaks, the artist or the work that slowly appears on a paper or a computer screen as a painting or a poem.

Is this still about art or an erotic encounter with strangers in the dark beyond the unlit back door of a park house? When I do not need to know your name nor where you came from but at that moment, we are one, and the strength we take from it will take us through tomorrow.