The Tourist

By Paul D Robertson. Charcoal, and white Chalk. 85 x 55cms. Sold.

This piece remains from 1st year University, when things were far more difficult for me, before I had come to terms with my alcoholism or my bipolar.

The image is one that I have drawn several times, though this piece is the most effective. I don't really understand why, but some people have difficulty in seeing what the figure (me) is doing.) I am hunched over, one pointy boot at the bottom, above that a knee directly out to the viewer. My right hand is wrapped around my side, coming out under my armpit. The other is clamped over my head, with my long hair hanging down through it. You get the idea...

I am far from this place now.

It is so named because though that is where I was, I did not stay there. And everything that I experienced felt like a horror carnival ride from some awful show.

It's torn at the top, but framed that way it looks... well it really works, definitively perhaps because the tear was not made by deliberate fingers, but by time and, hence, directly through the instability of myself and my life.