by Paul D Robertson

Oils, acrylics on gyprock,

130 x 130 cms

I think that this was the last piece that I painted before I quit drinking (1999 and not a single drop of sweet relief and incipient disaster since.)

It is painted on Gyprock as at the time I could not afford canvas or even board, so it weighs about 20 kgs. It won't fall apart though, and I built the frame out of some ridiculous hardwood that is indestructable.

The figure is meant to be me. I had long scruffy hair then. IF you drink enough... no matter how hard and how much you wash your hair, it will not become clean. The sick sweat, ethanol sweet, won't come off.

It is dark, yes, but so clear to me. I will never go back to being that boy under the bridge. Though he draws me in. I see him. I envy him his utter AQUIESCENCE. As supple as a fresh corpse. No resistance. No will left at all. I wrote this at the same time - I etched this ugly little poem onto the surface of a painting that I have no image of. It took me weeks.

I threw that piece brutal and true into the trash. After the blind ugly fuckers running the farce called a fine arts degree gave me a flat 50% pass in the final year of my degree. At least i burned out the uni's electric etcher thingie making it. I hope that they have not caused too many suicides. They are hardly worth the young lives, the artists who will never be, that they crush out of hand.

I don't know I've always been such an anachronism

I mean given my starting point I should have gone on to inevitable success Christ anyone else would have that's for sure.
Such a fucking walking stereotype

but I'm not I'm not

I never was little feet tiny legs and scars everywhere

still feel them in the heat sometimes.
Never know what to say anymore though I'm sure I used to

last wish of a damned man and all that wake me when the war is over I used to say

can you believe that just because just before I passed out waking angry

and wild

and never more than two hours at a time I swear.
Like a slap in the heart sometimes.
So hard so hard see them all lined up like that so hard fear clenching me up

and memories that are so bright but hard to see.
Know that there's only a little failure and a big scare for me later on again but
so lonely
makes my heart hurt.