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Painting Time
Moving atoms about
Thirty one years ago I was painting a skirting board in the back of the long living room of our old house in Swansea. My wife was watching ‘Only Fools and Horses’ on our small tv while ironing in front of the open fire. My new baby son was in his carry cot and the cat was sitting on the armchair. I had to repeatedly avoid absent-mindedly dipping my brush into my too-nearby mug of tea.
Why do I remember this in such detail? Because, as I painted, absorbed in the work in a neutral frame of mind, it occurred to me that what I was doing, however mundane, was being invested with these peripheral experiences and I was recording them physically as I went about the job. Layering them in, adding them to the fabric of our home.
The idea came in part from a radio programme I’d heard, about the theory that it might be possible to extract embedded sound from ancient pottery (“archaeoacoustics”). It was suggested that the sounds that had been going on around the potter as he turned the wheel would have caused tiny variances in a pot’s grooves as it was made. By then taking out all the ‘making’ sounds, it would theoretically leave a recording of the peripheral sounds of speech, or footsteps, or whatever might have filled the air that day.
It needn’t be as obvious as a groove made by a potter’s finger. When painting, we are…