Luminesce

By Paul D Robertson

Available For Sale

Oils on canvas

130 x 95 cm

This is my old friend and drinking buddy Karen. She is very cool.
I was trying in this piece to emphasise the sweetness of her skin; the way it glowed in the supersaturated light. I took the photograph for this piece in the Roundhouse building in Freo (I work from photos, from life and out of my head, probably in equal proportions.) We both lit cigarettes and threw the dust into the air of the cell where we were to make the light more diffuse and soft.
Since Karen posed for this I have lost her number and she has neglected to call me also (to her detriment, if for no other reason than this piece itself.)
She has never seen this painting. I am not that arrogant (ok maybe I am), but still, not very many beautiful women have the possibility afforded them of having their beauty so observed. She should at least see it. I tried to track her down… ah well. I would like to see her also because a) she is actually pretty cool, and 2) she could probably fill me in a bit on what exactly it was I did in my early 20s (mostly vague haze and bad smells in my memory.)
She also appears in the piece “Dreams of sleeping,” wearing the same dress.
There is a certain sense of the melancholic to her. This is common to pretty much all of my works to date.
The idea of light and dark, yin and yang, in the language of the Dao – where there is good there is bad, heat there is cold. In my experience this has proven to be the case not in the spiritual sense (or in karma, which doesn’t really work if you take reincarnation out of the picture,) but in everything that we do within the bounds of the material world.
I am about as much of an atheist as a person can be (this doesn’t mean that I do not respect the beliefs of others!)
If the idea of an afterlife is removed from the equation, then the moments, the time that we have, is not lessened in value. In an absolute sense, what we have, this life – each week day hour minute second is in actuality made infinitely more precious. It must mean more to us, because this is all that we have.
It means also that the responsibility for living well, for living to the hilt with everything within us lies with us, in our hearts and minds. With our love, our strength, the veracity and purity of our actions.

But it is also in some ways a bleak way of looking at the world. Because to me, these moments must end. They must.

So this piece, as almost every one of my others, has this attempt at beauty, and it has an undercurrent, a swelling, of sorrow.

Because life is beautiful. And because life is also sad.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.
well I would have to say i Mean sure -
the temptation exists and is not only there but an open doorway lined with social excersizes and embracing nomenclature
but one should also note the teeth and the eviscerating smile forming on our own lips - we are not in danger of devouring each other so much perhaps, as ourselves.
I used to say with heavy breath rich with moisture and lust - I did I remember it explicitly and exquisitely, my eyes deep pinprick lights I would indeed of course be grinding my teeth to points themselves -
I would say with relish imagining my own flicking pointed glances heating up with the dancing touch of my vision -
I would open my mouth and feed outwards, I would say
"Eat life!"
Guttural and with cheeks sore from smiles such smiles such wide cheshire smiles.

This advice I would have issued in whispers to my own ears if only my red red lips would stretch... "eat it...suck it down..." Oh yes.
A vast fraction of tolerance and Gargoyle posture curled over myself heaped over heavy and toppled... well of course. And how is it else that I should react - after all I was and still am -there.
Whatever you do

Don't answer the phone.

I might, if you convince me - or perhaps begin to try just even ask I would feed you segments from an orange and tend to your sticky cheek with paint spattered sheets. Lose your faith in yourself no no I don't mean it THAT WAY I mean lose your faith - in yourself. It is better that way. Faith in any and every sense belongs in our stomachs with the orange segments, mixed with pulp and bile somewhere inside you that you have never seen. If you would take the care and trouble for a little in the afernoon - stare or even swell your own sensations and you might find indeed that that is where it already resides.
If not then it will need to be swallowed much like the life that you have wet and tasted with your serpentine tounge. No forks or any sort of cutlery thanks. I believe the requirement is for gleaming human jaws and little else.

And like small but repetitive hearts dotting romantically curved i's we will open our shirts and place our pale hands on our bare flesh and feel the indifferent stutter of each counted breathy beat, scattered with earth and kissed each one each turn supple and tender.

Can feel it silky inside me a monster and dancer both vibrating hand in hand sick under the moonlight.