K

“K”
Digital Painting – Sept 2009

Our Self-Portraits
From K to Julian

Can’t you see what I see
in this twig foaming with plum flowers?
A whole quarry-load of granite eyes
have cracked, waiting for it to blossom —
but now the explosion is final…ly happening,
as your words light the fuse to my heart:
‘Till old, we sleep.’

I look away to a winter vase-landscape
thinking: that’s where I lived before I met you.

Then I rub two plum petals together,
their dried blood dripping from my fingers
into a frozen stream.

I still see precisely how things stood
when your own heart burst into flames.

Original Blue Line Sketch
Tonal study chosen for use on painting.

In the middle of fleshing K out.

I fell in love with the character of K who is based upon the writer Ling Shuhua. It’s said she had an affair with Julian Bell, nephew of Virgina Woolf. Shuhua was a woman of modernity in the early 20th century China whose writings came to the west via the Bloomsbury set.