Deep Deep Water

INVISIBLE WOMAN

OIL ON IRISH LINEN DISTRESSED WITH EARTH PIGMENTS, IRON, COPPER AND GOLD METALS ON IRISH LINEN

Sat on top of the boat this morning and waited for the sunrise, decided the next step on the Buried Woman (My Invisible Woman above) painting. I covered her body in Dutch gold, highlighting different parts with gold and silver, dusted over in copper, she’s been buried for such a long time now, it’s so great to see her covered in a gold shield, it’s almost like amour.

Deep, deep, deeper than you could know,

I am buried, it’s too deep for you to hear my silence,

too deep for you to see but, I have been here, here in my own burial cave.

Each day I changed

and each day I decayed

but nothing could be seen

it was all too dark for you or I to see what had occurred.

And then there was just me,

it was me who began to at first to see my hands,

they were skin over skeleton knuckles protruding.

They had aged, but they could still perform as the tool they had always been.

So my hands demanded that my knees knelt.

And my back bent forward to enable my hands to begin to dig.

And they dug and dug, for they knew I had been buried.

They knew air was now all too thin.

They needed to dig deep, deep and deeper than ever before,

so each night they dug and each day they slept

each night they dug and each day they wept

Until they had unearthed until they had finally exposed,

the first of what was buried below.

– London, 13th January 1996

Words written 4 months before I decided to purchase an impromptu plane ticket and alone seek out the deserts of America. When I arrived in Atlanta I’d find from a kind gentleman, I’d arrived on the wrong side of the country, I would have to purchase another plane ticket to Las Vegas so that night I took myself to see the Atlanta braves, it seemed fitting.

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