The chance to voice deep thoughts wrapped in wisdom – waiting for exposure
I listen, listen depicting the silence as caution takes over, and I am once a child obeying her teacher.
I sit opposite you with an easel between us, you with brushes delicately poised for action and me, a lady of society.
I am sincerely nobody, apart from how society presents me, hands laid demurely and pink across my lap. I position myself on a floor of ruffled silk. I am required to say nothing .
Our conversation is silent but waiting on chance. The chance to express, I contain my words and study your eyes as they slowly blink to warn me you are entering a zone of creativity and I must remain still. I lower my eyes as requested lifting them cautiously to catch your gaze in a brief but mischievous moment taken from my youth.
We transcend and images form. To set the stage you must study the scene. Your attire, I note, worn on tradition reflects the importance of texture.
Theatrical painted screens placed behind me, who am I to be created amidst this colour? To be adorned over some fireplace or at the top of the stairs. You do not know me at all I obviously assume.
Your starched white collar holds your head to attention and keeps you in a world of conformity. You on one side and an image of me on the other.
Rosetti runs a finger under my hair and sweeps it to the back of my neck he lifts my chin. You see him, his ghostly presence fussing with the minor detail. But my chin is defiant which you require for the scene to tell your story. I feel your gratitude to his openess, one you have respect for.
I think of you as a man fighting the world and supressing your anger. A secret you do not wish to hold and yet want to keep silent and free from fear. It burns and festers inside you then dripping out from a paint brush loaded, it tells your story, the intimate details. It is between you and God to beg for forgiveness – Hail Mary.
We pay your bills but do not speak for you or of you, only in the dimly lit dining rooms of country houses. I maybe the wife of a politician, depicted on canvas and silenced by her lack of words but I could caress you and let you cry into my shoulder. I sense you need it however, distasteful you would find my caresses.
You gesture me to lean forward slightly, when the voice of a young man cries out in the distance. There is frustration in his voice as he calls out your name. You breathe and smile, and I see love in an instant as your eyes fight to contain emotion. You are warmly amused.
You turn back to colour, it is warm and golden, and you start to create what you feel. Without your vision we are a blank canvas. Without it we would all be empty and lost in direction. Who has the right to deny love which is created in your thoughts by heaven above?
Thank G.od for art and colour and paint and blank spaces to fill our hearts.Thank all who can see heaven
I ponder the question. Did you knew the strength of love when you met your soldier? How misplaced you must have felt in the bland and brutal colours of war. Where life had no value amongst your God and Glory.
Do you use me to bring what they call respectability into your world of secrecy that through no fault of your own you have to search a way of explaining through paint and sculpture? You ask me for a second time to lower my gaze. Our eyes cannot meet, yet I envy your world of love and passion, your delight in the richness of elegance that only wraps me in chains. You see what I cannot feel and I am in sorrow hoping that one day we can both escape what keeps us silent.
Inspiration taken from the life and work of the artist Glyn Philpot 1884 to 1937
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