Watercolours and Titus Groan

Yesterday, a friend presented me with a pack of 140 lb. Fluid, Cold Press Watercolour Paper. This also included a delicate brush with a purple granite-like handle, which reads ‘Oscoda Prado Synthetic Barcelona.’ She topped this gift off with an invitation to use her watercolours.

It is funny about the arts and I.  My gene pool boasts of artists, writers, musicians, singers, and even electronics experts.  Strange. Well, not really.

We all had good brains, a facility for language, and a love of reading. I am one of them. Of course, you know that, especially if you have followed me in any capacity before.

Watercolours? Oils? It could be! Wait. The materials in my hand say it will be. Life never gave me a chance at this before but now it has.

I do not know about you but being a writer and social media squatter makes my brain saturate itself a few times a day. It is then that playing with colours and exploring my curiosity about what I will do, is a huge draw.  No words required. Actually, no thinking—at least, not in the way I usually do.  I will wander in my grey matter or mud bath, so to speak. This one is not as renowned as those I enjoyed in Rotorua, New Zealand, but it is beguiling just the same.  Oh, yes!

I am a curious cat, which found me yesterday shuffling through my many books. At that moment, I found a quote from my copy of  Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake, one of my favourite authors.  This description is of painting, which is also relevant to me because I watch a painter at work every single day. My friend.  These words capture so effectively the view from four feet across this studio space (excluding the non inclusive male pronouns), I just had to quote them.

“The love of the painter standing alone and staring, staring at the great coloured surface he is making. Standing with him in the room the rearing canvas stares back with tentative shapes halted in their growth, moving in a new rhythm from floor to ceiling. The twisted tubes, the fresh paint squeezed and smeared across the dry upon his palette. The dust beneath the easel. The paint has edged along the brushes’ handles. The white light in a northern sky is silent. The window gapes as he inhales his world. His world: a rented room, and turpentine. He moves towards his half-born. He is in love.”

In a slightly different way, I am in love too.  With my new paper with the texture which delights my fingertips.  The sleek brush I now count among my ‘Terry gear.’ Do not forget the borrowed Lukas watercolours that make my dancing eyes spill frenetic rainbows on the page.  At least, I hope so.