Happenstance

Here is a little bit of what I’ve been doing lately. After my upgrade to iPhone 6, one of my favourite apps, The Amazing Type-Writer, no longer worked. Fortunately I stumbled upon a secondhand typewriter in a charity store and had it serviced by the last typewriter repairman in Melbourne.

I rediscovered the joys of a mechanical typewriter, and have been having a lot of fun typing up poems on all the vintage paper I have collected. The papers date from approximately 1860–1970, and take the form of receipts, letters, envelopes, ledgers, notebooks and the like. I have also experimented with incorporating pen and ink illustrations on some of them, such as this one above.

The paper dated from around 1915 if I remember correctly, but the pencil scribble was barely legible. Written about a couple of years ago, the poem was a dream I had – I actually still retain some of the visuals, it made such a strong and eerie impression on me. Because the paper had already been written on in pencil, I couldn’t make even a rough sketch (with a view to possibly rubbing out errors) of the chandelier I intended to paint, so I boldly went straight in with the pen and ink.

I have always enjoyed fearlessly painting like that – loose gestures impart such a carefree mood. When paper is precious or very expensive, I have sometimes found it difficult to be insouciant with ink, but over the years I have slowly let that fear go. Accidental spills and drips and wonky lines are very rewarding in their own way: they’re real, in the moment, and there’s no artifice. I value that.