My Attempts at Painting
(1967)

I had at one time a great ambition to create with my own hands a work of art which would never be forgotten. I achieved my purpose, if only in that I have never forgotten that painting.

One morning, early in June, armed with paints and palette and all the other mechanical impediments that painters carry, I set off for the river. By mid-morning I was perched proudly on a converted kitchen stool, squinting along a length of paintbrush at a dirty thumb. (I don't know why artists do that, but it impressed my audience - one small boy licking a large lollipop).

After the squinting ceremony, I settled down and decided where each item was to be placed on the "canvas" (a piece of old sacking). But then disaster struck.

As, after outlining the objects, I was just about to put the first colour on the canvas, a great gust of wind hit easel, stool and self and sent us all crashing to the ground. The outcome was not too bad but I sat for a few moments under the easel with a large dab of red oil-paint on my nose, the object of the lollipop boy's gaze. He made no attempt at rescue but just stood over me, unhurriedly licking. I picked myself and the equipment up, Fortunately it was not damaged. | lodged the legs of the stool firmly in the ground and, having set up the easel again, recommenced painting.

I began, wrongly I now realize, with the sky. This entailed reaching up to the top and furthest corner of the canvas and as I reached, again, a gust of wind blew the easel over. Again I fell off my precarious perch and it was a large dab of green paint that this time adhered to my nose.

I got up again and was just marvelling that the stool had stayed firm when I noticed that the palette had fallen on top of the canvas and that both were now lying at the water's edge, just submerged and turning the cool clear water into a mass of wispy colour.

Hurriedly I rescued the two and detached the one from the other. Both canvas and paint were ruined.

And so, totally discouraged and exhausted, my confidence shattered, I laid all the components on the ground, including myself, and I went to sleep.

The canvas dried quickly and it now hangs in my bedroom, a mass of every conceivable colour, a souvenir of my attempts at painting, and much admired by visitors as an interesting example of contemporary abstract art!

P. MERCER, 5B