Purdey Williams (She)
Painting is enticing because of its autonomy, it demands of us to sit and take time in order to dream. I make my passage through it like chapters and the characters cut outs in a Pollock Theatre. My practice is a solace where I can meditate on an idea. The idea is often vague; torn from literature, conversation or a recurring observation. For a while I have thought that to paint is to cast away the substance for the shadow. It is how I feel when I draw, the spectator casting my eye over scenes my body has travelled, imagined or real. The shadow is the only visual certainty we have of our presence. It is our relationship with the land and with the light that sustains it. I work from my impressions, from the props I gather and the faces I love
Make Me Believe It
Works
Constellations
An Ending
I called you today but you didn’t recognise my voice. I tried to say words you would understand as mine but every attempt ended with fruitless confusion. With this disappointment, I began to describe my face instead: the changing colour of my eyes in different light and the two forms of cartilage that make up my noses point. Still, you refused to acknowledge former love. That said, you had patience, you listened and tried to understand but it was as if a broom had brushed my memory from your brain. I couldn’t understand how minds that used to sleep with each other, sharing dreams, had become so detached, so disparate in truth. I still hear your voice, it mutters metronomically, like a radio in my cushioned bed. I called you for some variation but the experience has left me intent – like a bird thrown from its nest in a sudden dance of wind. After the call finished and I had gathered my broken parts I listened to a recital of ‘Love After Love’ by Derek Walcott. I began to take down parts of you still tacked to my wall, building a new nest for newly buried love to tuck under my bed my bed and forget for a while.