Always taking leave
2025, mixed media on canvas, 30.5 x 20 cm
This is a small mixed media work on canvas, mounted on panel. After laying a gesso ground the composition emerged using graphite pencil followed by sanguine and sepia conte crayons, ending up with some scalpel work to scrape back the lights.
I tend to give quite a lot of thought to titling work. It's an odd business: sometimes a title can seem right at first but then after some reflection it can quickly become a horrible idea. A successful title simply continues to 'feel right' which I think is to do with there being an element of mystery or wonderment generated when it is considered in concert with the visuals.
Today I settled upon a title I took from one of Rilke’s Duino Elegies:
‘And we: onlookers, always, everywhere,
always looking into, never out of, everything.
It fills us. We arrange it. It collapses.
We arrange it again, and collapse ourselves.
Who has turned us round like this, so that,
whatever we do, we always have the aspect
of one who leaves? Just as they
will turn, stop, linger, for one last time,
on the last hill, that shows them all their valley - ,
so we live, and are always taking leave.’
