THINGS DONE WHILE DREAMING

Something uncomfortable was happening inside me. It had happened before but never quite to this extent. Years ago, in San Francisco when I’d seen my first Baselitz in real life, and a few years later, when I’d encountered a collection of Kirchner’s paintings at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne.

 

The feeling was like a twitch, like a broken hand flexing its fingers. My immediate instinct was to smother it like I had done before, but a key was turning slowly and deliberately in the lock of a door, a door I had forgotten was there. Before I could think to stop it or caution myself against it, I allowed the door to swing open.

 

When I got home to Cape Town, I immediately started to paint again. I was surprised that, after over a decade of abstaining, the process of laying paint onto a canvas came naturally, almost effortlessly. I made the shift to writing all those years ago when I was struggling with painting. As a painter my biggest hurdle was always subject matter. Writing gave me a sense of freedom that I couldn’t find with painting.

I found it far easier to articulate my thoughts through words. The struggle to accurately express myself was gone and every image I wanted to create was translated fluidly into sentences and paragraphs. But now suddenly I can tap into the visual world that I’ve spent so many years creating inside my mind.

 

It’s almost as if I’m possessed, compelled to paint out all the images that are pressing on my brain. Over the intervening years of writing fiction, I have populated my mind with many creatures and characters and scenarios. These images are now demanding to be made more real; they desire colour, shape and form, they want to live and breathe in the world.