20/09/2019

I met Sacha from Norwich station, and we reached my studio after the dreamily quiet walk through the grounds of Norwich cathedral. The sun was beaming cheerfully and the cathedral close looked like a medieval film set, minus mud and peasantry. Walking up Magdalen street she was delighted with the big old merchants' houses functioning as shops - Ruth's Jerusalem Kitchen, Ernie's Fill-up Shop, the Congolese tailor. She'd taught at Norwich School of Art a while ago, and seemed happy to be back in the city.

Sacha's immediate reaction to my cutouts, set up in a colourful sprawl in the studio, was that they had a courtly quality; they were like players in a pack, not individual faces so much as emblems who could be reshuffled into different configurations. Like Manick, she too observed that there was something of the Commedia Delle Arte about them (it's in my notes to check this reference out - I've only the very vaguest notion of what this was).

Another aspect I'd also discussed with manick was how to present the pieces so as to give them more presence. Sacha felt the sticks I'd been using were out of another world, natural not made by me. With some artists plinths and supports do more than just present the work, they add an archgitecural domension, change the relationship to the ground, add a dimension of geometry. I'm thinking of Stephen Claydon, Lothar Hempel, Franz West.

Another suggestion was to focus on drawing once more. Always return to drawing! The real will offer things you cannot conjure up just through imagination. Drawing would lead, Sacha suggested, to including the hands, the legs, taking up more than the face alone.

I recorded this on a miniscule dictaphone which, to my amazement, actually worked! I've been transcribing Sacha's melodious tones and my annoying gabble into my sketch book, a good way to let what she said sink in.