by Paul D Robertson

mixed media

78x 65cms

Available for sale. $900

A more recent encounter with nonspecific disillusionment and depression produced this piece, though I do like it and it certainly represents a departure for me. (Re-posted with a better pic and editing 6th of 2007.)

I used all sorts of stuff to paint it with, mostly oil paint, varnish, sand and the otter painting that was underneath it to start with.

I plan to explore this style more thoroughly when I am well and truly rich and famous and everyone wants to give me heaps of money for everything that I do.

When what happens is this:

A moment, an image. A shock of realisation - if that is what it is.

I lift a drink to my lips and there is a red stain on the plastic - a dark, red stain. My pupils widen in shock and I lift the container from me, spilling liquid down the front of my shirt and I think

For this moment this is not sane this is a moment of insanity this is not real. This is so far from real that I am lost.
Can we - does it work in this way in this manner, are we aware? Is knowledge, awareness, a proof of sanity in itself? Is this absolute saturated fear a concrete ridge of rationale or is it the pace the meter the rhythm of madness itself?

OK one from another a step into the fucking light and find a handhold though it is sharp and rusted and tears the hand that grips it and lever and pull until once more we are convinced that this world that we see that this light that spills over these keys from this screen is the wholeness and purity of the world.

The panic is an illusion a confabulation and really is the evidence of instability in its very focus and sharp bite. The fear itself is the only answer and it is the depth of it the breadth of its reach in our hearts and fingers that we must, we must control and hold.
That the dark stain existed that it can be seen by rolling eyes other than mine flashing white and weird in the night is not the question that tears. It is the blind panic itself its own monster cruel and huge grinning up at me.

What happens to us when we snap into focus and listen to the singing blood in our ears and know that for this moment despite anything else any appetite or false glow of reason any tight wires across our hearts or brilliant lights drawn across our minds - can we see in our bloody heads and straining fists that for this time this great time this whole moment this exactitude of clocks and paucity of stuttered beats that this is insane?

The thought itself tart and violent in our throats and hands. Defiled and filthy with awareness and self generation but

What
The

What
The
Fuck?

Because there is no lie greater and more true than one whispered to ourselves in the night than revealed in the pain of fear in sweat and tremor in stretching BONE. In the deep moaning terror of silence. Of our own selves creeping behind us in the shadows the empty stairs of our minds: this is the horror the truth about black claws that drip and rip, of laughter misplaced hollow shuddering and inexplicable.
It has never mattered; more than the soft flesh at our temples, beneath our wild, wild eyes, our wounds sure and sore rough beneath our fingers. More than the depth of the shadows in the corners of our cold rooms it is the cold

INSIDE US

That we must fear.

The sharpness of sudden breath, of smoke that is STILL.
The turn of a jaw the clench of old teeth, feet pressed together bones indeed that TWIST that were never meant to twist whose arc was defined and pure something, yes,
Some part ancient and chill in the deep shadows.
Utterly cognizant inflexibly real frozen in awareness crisp with line and light. That there are bodies hung from hooks somewhere in the skeins and flares and redness; torque and wire-tight flesh lies masques. That there are within us inside us each, monsters and horror. It is that these things that they are that they have us in their (our own) dry white grip.
This is the truth
And it has never been anything more than true: our perceptions matter not, never as deeply as our fear. Tease the fear from the hungry wetness of our heads pull it like an old suture from an infected wound; hot to the touch burning and sick.
It is this untamed cut a pain a bleeding eye that chatters its etiolated bleaching freedom and dawns starring our vision. Fired with life. This IS us, it defines us we are made from fear a mangled hideous groping. The spark in absolute darkness -
It is our genius it turns us flesh bone thought and gall into the depth and dismay of the real.

I am out of my mind. I know secret things. I am more alive.