Capturing Worlds Solo Show

Green Lake III, oil on canvas, 50 x 76cm, on show at the Hastings Art forum

My solo show, Capturing Worlds, opened at the Hastings Arts Forum on the 14th June for two weeks. The Private View was on the 17th June and there was a great turnout on a hot sultry night.

Throughout the evening there were poetry readings by writers who had written poems in direct response to the paintings in the show and guitarist Miles Willey’s understated live music carried us along through the evening.

Huge thanks to Robin Pridy who ran an evening writers workshop in the gallery just before the show opened and helped with editing and rewrites in what was just a matter of 2 or 3 days before the poets’ performances at the private view. Her poem in response to my painting ‘Wake’ was performed with Willey’s guitar music puncturing and answering the spoken word. There was a perceptible sigh of pleasure in the audience as her poem took us on a journey across the universe!

Response to ‘Wake’, painted by Stephanie Fawbert

I cut the water, thinly,

quiet in the darkness,

cold grasps away the warmth I was left.

Life is on the way,

on the way

Below, a pool of dark water.

Above, the sun winks out

The world is big.

So I’ve heard.

Stars press in and out of time.

Fireworks in the darkness,

to flare and flame

I see a clever video.

The Earth a head on a pin,

each life a point of dust,

the stars perhaps a million dandelion seeds,

floating in space.

I can see this.

The thickness of night

This blanket

opens and slides away—

to vapour.

And I can see it.

I look at the shadowed trees,

I look to the hills beyond.

I see across them, over and through,

I am no longer cold.

Does it matter

what is fire

or vapour,

pin or seed,

dark or light?

I am breath and muscle and time,

ribboning out, shimmering through black.

I return, sometimes, to this moment.

© Robin Pridy

Robin Pridy, reading her poem at the Capturing Worlds Private View