Seeds And Sparks 1

I've become the focus of a couple of creative endeavours over the past week or so. Firstly, there was the trip to the Tate Modern with Niece #1 last Friday. She's been good at art since she was a toddler. One day I'll dig out the absolutely brilliant picture that she drew of me when she was four years old, which was a stylised man-in-a-suit composed purely of five rectangles and five circles.

Discussing art a couple of months ago, even though she's mature for her fourteen years I was surprised by the sophistication of her tastes. I've been threatening to take her to the Tate ever since. When she asked to borrow my camera to take some shots to use as the basis for her impending GCSE Art exam, it seemed like a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

Sure enough, it was a very rewarding experience. I couldn't get her interested in Rothko, much as I tried, but we both loved the huge, brooding canvases of Gerhard Richter, who I have to confess was entirely new to me. I liked this 1960s quote of his, taken from one of the displays. With the possible exception of "passive" I'd have to say that I'm with him every step of the way.

"I don't know what I want; I am inconsistent, non-committal, passive; I like the indefinite, the boundless; I like continual uncertainty."

I've just read Brenda Ueland's inspirational If You Want To Write, in which she puts forward the same view even more forcefully: "Consistency is the horror of the world". I think that might be my new motto, in fact. It turned out to be #1's too; after taking literally hundreds of pictures of thronging crowds, she decided that the one she'd rather paint is a headshot of me, taken in the café.

Modesty - not to mention paranoia - forbids me from posting that picture here, but I can't deny that she has a great eye. Even though I look like I've been sleeping rough for a week in the shot that she's selected, there's no doubt that she's captured something quintessentially me. The sugar bowl above is also one of hers and it's one of the loveliest photographs I've seen this year.

Continues in part 2...

Posted by Hg on Thursday 27 March 2008 at 23:30.
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