Wednesday, August 13, 2008

in paint

I love to paint. I don't want to as much as I .. need to. When I paint, there is always a reason - stress, joy, sadness, or just an insatiable need to quench an urge, an urge I cannot pinpoint the origin of. I think about this a lot, try and focus in on what it is exactly that produces this energy. I'd like to tap it, and redirect it into more .. administrative .. areas of my life.

I came across an article on Mail Online, a site based in London, and it caught my eye. When Tommy McHugh, a 58-year-old former builder, suffered a brain hemorrhage seven years ago, a funny thing happened.


"About a month after the haemorrhage, the creative urges began. I started writing poetry, but in a manic way. Was it any good? I don't know, but I could fill five exercise books a day. The painting urge came on about two months later.

'I was filing up any spare paper I had with drawings and paintings. Within weeks I wanted to paint more and more and had started painting walls. Now my house looks like one big collage of my work with every surface - even furniture - painted with a face or scene. "

If a traumatic injury could "turn on" the seemingly same neurotic creative juice I have had my whole life ... is it something physical? Is there a cat-scannable THING? quirk? defect? in my skull?

hmm.

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