After major brain surgery in 2016, I felt strangely and strongly compelled to write, and actually started writing in the high dependence ward, a day or so after the event. I sat in the ward, in the bed, tapping away with one finger (just like I am now) on my phone.
Somehow I knew I had to write a book. I wasn’t sure why, nor was I sure what it would look like, I just knew I had to.
The words that came, underpinned why I had been pulled towards painting and making stuff my whole life. Now though the words gave me much more clarity around what was so compelling about being creative in some way.
It seemed crazy once the book was done, to not release it in conjunction with the showing of some paintings (I seem to spend a large amount of time chucking paint at canvas, so….)
An exhibition I have named “Just a Moment” was born.
For me exhibitions have almost always been primarily about the paintings. This time though, I expanded the scope.
The show is still about the images, obviously, but there is a “louder voice” about the importance of their message, and the power of the philosophy behind them.
My paintings now have a deeper aspect, and they are, in this exhibition and for the first time, accompanied by words that seem to go with them.
I found the process of writing stuff, in the past, to be clumsy and dissatisfying. Now though,…well, you be the judge.
These assemblies of words are pointers to a deeper dimension of my pictures, and I’m hoping they can give people an insight into a way of being in the world, that can even transform the experience of a potentially terminal illness.
The jolting nature of my cancer experience, caused a shift in my view of the world that is still (six years later)
exquisite, and sometimes even rapturous. We are alive, and… alive and possibly even conscious of being alive.
That is is incredible beyond belief, and perhaps worthy of taking “Just a Moment” to both consider, and enjoy.
It may be all we really have.
"Just A Moment” exhibition opens at Lennox Arts Collective gallery, 2/72 Ballina Street, Lennox Head, on Friday 24th June, 6-8pm, and continues until Thursday 7th July. Lennox Arts Collective is open 7 days a week from 10am-3pm.
