I will tell you a story about the quirks of memory…
Years ago I was visiting Tate National Gallery in London( 1993? 1994?). A lot to see, especially if you are an artist and you like impressionists and post-impressionists, for instance. Cézanne, Pissaro, Renoir, Van Gogh…, as I said, A LOT to see…
Years later, I found out my memory wasn’t as good as I thought. I did remember, like in a dream, a turmoil of colors and maybe a landscape or two… Pissaro? Renoir? Van Gogh?… Vaguely, very vaguely…
And yet, a small, very small painting, haunted me. I was dreaming it and the details were quite precise… Bizarre little people, painted with precision but in a marvelous textured way, with saturated colors but not excessively bright… Something like Bosh or Pieter Brueguel the Old... I could NOT remember, even tortured, the name of the painter… I knew just that he wasn’t a very famous one…
A few years ago, I was flipping a pile of junk magazines in a garage sale and BAM! there it was!! my little painting from the Tate National Gallery… it was only a small, bad, reproduction, in B & W, but I could have recognise it in millions! And the story behind that, the story of the mad painter Richard Dadd was even more hauting and interesting… But about his story – connected with the subject of madness and art – next time…(canned laughter)
A taste, although… the portrait of Richard Dadd, painting in a English asylum…
Danu's small world 