LOOK SEE ❋ David Walker

After Mark Rothko

but what about the quiet things, the little dull things hidden between the big shiny things,
are these also formative, do these also count, is there virtue in their silence, is your lack of
recall somehow key, do the things you forget make you who you are and anyway who are
you, what about the things you could have been are they there too, in the picture i mean, i
mean when you paint it will it include what doesn’t make it in, will what you don’t paint
also be somehow painted, is there something crucial about that exclusion, anyway do you
dream of painting, do you have that in you, that kind of stillness;

people don’t focus in a continuous narrative stream except for that you know exactly at
which point in the story you learned this, sitting around which table, drinking which
colour, breaking which bread, asking which questions, fixating on which women, aware
of which failures, hoping for which clarity;

but what about the things you can’t see clearly are they there too, the things you can’t see
at all, and is this blindness a failure or is this blindness a symptom and is this blindness
blindness at all or something else, can blindness be deliberate, yes, can blindness be
painful, yes, if the blindness is chosen are you really truly blind, the same question about
fear, the same question about love, these things they say wash over you but for something
to wash over you don’t you have to just stand there, how long can you just stand there,
can you paint on your back, can you paint in your sleep, can you remember how this
started, is that memory really a memory, the thing about your painting is that it’s one hell
of a painting, the thing about your painting is it’ll always just be paint.