SUNKEN FENCE
We crossed a bridge. On reaching the other side we glanced down to see a small paddock far below. Not an official paddock but a piece of no-mans-land, surrounded by highways. The daughter of a local councillor had confiscated the land some time ago to train her horse. I don't know if it was the vertiginous view, the banality of the surroundings, their emptyness or the pleasure of the company but I can't shake this image out of my mind. I keep imagining what the daughter and her horse look like, playing out scenarios from a film that doesn't exist. It stays with me for some reason, the incongruous sight of a well-tended paddock in the midst of speeding commuter traffic. It would be pointless to add anything or attempt some kind of visual analogy. The source of inspiration and its potential outcome seem to have merged, it's as simple as that. Time vanishes. Past and future meet in this one image, a restless image that plays in the mind like a moving panorama. For a moment I am set free from the constant flow of interwoven images, my senses already filled by this singular vision. They are everywhere, these moments of contemplation. You just have to sniff the air. That familiar view through your bedroom window can suddenly reveal something new. After years of treating it with weary neglect you can be captivated by a sight you never noticed before. Does it matter that you were so unreceptive? After all, the eventual discovery is a reward in itself. Perhaps here is something which touches on the value of artists. Could they be thought of as detectives searching for such unacknowledged moments, forgotten scents and neglected atmospheres? Looking for the extraordinary in the banal? And, perhaps, also hunting for an indefinable surplus, a point where the source of inspiration and its outcome not only merge but lead to new and unforeseeable moments like this.