Paul J Penton – Songwriter

Painting – Daily Wiring March 29

Even though there’s nothing obvious there seems to be a shimmering force field separating the painting on the wall from the observer, an unspoken rule about not getting to close and definitely ‘don’t touch’ screaming from every corner of the frame. The room is full of Victorian era paintings. Reflected sounds of hushed whispers and squeaky gym shoes ascend into a dome of heaven above, light drips down through small square slits of glass adorned with a swell of over head lamps that sizzle with a high voltage electricity pylon frisson about them, much like the unseen shimmer in front of the paintings.

They all seem to be clothed in ornamental or hunting dress, a crimson red jacket with a black helmet pitted into his crotch and off white riding jodhpurs. The varnish has long since begun to wither and yellow and it needs restoration, cracks mottle the surface like a dry river bed, but once this undergrowth was a moist fresh delta of oil and linseed, the air reeking with the pungent smell and taste of creation. The artists dined on palette of brushes, spatulas and scrapers to bring this one to fruition. Hands by the end of each day would be a claggy mass of mixed pigments that would not wash out in water – perhaps distilled whale oil might have worked. The varnish mixed up as a combination of linseed and egg white, a gloopy mass that hung off the brush in thick spiderwebs , engulfing the glowing colours beneath now yellowed with nicotine stained age.