“There is a kind of day that is very grey or brown . . . it is a mood or tone I often feel on a dreary day, waiting for a taxi before it rains or going to some kind of daily routine . . . It’s the experience of being on the street in open space, or just inside ourselves. What do we feel, what do we choose to notice and sense on a given day? It’s about the internal and external landscape of the place as I experience it.”

From "Taking note", by Nicholas Laughlin, in the August 2006 Caribbean Review of Books

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

"Down Diego"

Down Diego

Titles ( L-R) : "D'Vale", "Red Horny Boy Ride", "Starting Blocks" and "Itchy Lawn and Sticky Fingers". "Down Diego" is yet another thread that I just noticed within the group of new drawings. It is another of those works that engage, the unmentionable or unseen - tropical suburbia in the late 60's. I like it because it contradicts much of my usual concerns about the use of the women's bodies within conventional gendered narratives. It carries a recurring theme that I have avoided or deferred for some time now, but this series is not about being rational. It's about sensing rather than censoring. In one of my early texts in the 90's, I heard myself referring to Diego Martin as " that suburban fungus on the landscape" what of this moment from my growing years would create such a reaction / description.