RICHARD SWANN ART

Black Cat

When your paintings are for sale in the place where you work, you get a lot of unfiltered feedback.  Who would guess that the guy failing to frame a football shirt at the back of the shop, slumped in defeat before the cursed contrariness of fabric, asking the gods why a signed George Best shirt has to be XL when George Best was an S, maybe an M at most, is also responsible for the paintings of scruffy birds and disreputable beasts and rusty scissors on the walls?  Obvious when you look at his hair and clothing but by now the customer has loudly voiced an opinion:

–  That’s a rabbit not a hare (printer’s error, not mine).

–  The rabbit and the grass are done in different styles (guilty as charged your honour).

–  Mountains aren’t that colour (listen, a Scottish cousin of mine recently described an entire hillside of ‘acidic orange’).

–  That beak’s the wrong shape (true, it’s far too pointy).

–  That’s hideous (yeah, and it’s a self portrait, so thanks).

And so on.  Recently there’s been a consistent theme.  The cat must have sat in some whitewash.  There must be some cat-bothering deviant roaming the streets of Hastings armed with flour bombs.  It’s a piebald cat but the pie’s all up one end and the bald’s at the other.

It was actually a black cat.  All over.  Stalking something in bright summer sunshine and about as inconspicuous as a goth on a beach, until either by coincidence or with impressive guile it chose to sneak along the shadow cast by a tree.  In the painting most of it is in the shadow but its rear end is still in the sun, on its way to joining the front of the cat in crepuscular obscurity but not quite there yet.  And just you get hold of a cat, bound to be one lying around somewhere, and shine a bright light on it.  The hairs reflect.  Sort of.  When seen from the right angle.  So, in short, no way have I painted the cat wrong.

Hope that settles matters.

I may repaint the cat.