Drawing on what has already been suggested
- Peter Neilson

Time passes. I hesitate.

Then, to begin again, an email.

Shall we meet for coffee, my friend?

I’ve been ill, but I’m better than that now.

You’re place or mine?

Or somewhere in between?

At this late stage of an interrupted life of making visual images, I have become drawn to simply placing words on coloured backgrounds, putting them up on a wall and inviting in the neighbours.

I am unsure if they are Maxims (influenced by Georges Braque), Aphorisms, Western Haiku (Jack Kerouac), or Poems (Bertolt Brecht and Chinese and Japanese poetry). They are what they are. Michelangelo wrote poetry, Kerouac painted and drew, Bob Dylan does it all, and makes gates. Good company to be unsure in.

As an aside, when knowledge of woodgraining was a required house painting skill, tradesmen would often secretly sign their name into the painted woodgrain on a panel door or the wainscot of their interior woodgraining.

– excerpt from Peter Neilson’s artist statement, 2023