Whilst I’m on a break from things, here are three meditations - on ageing and embarrassment, infirmity and fear and revelatory celebration! In this order - Maria Lassnig, Philip Larkin and Leonora Carrington. In their own ways, all are provocative and sublime. Lassnig is exhibited HERE. The wonderful Hearing Trumpet - well, you can buy it online - and for those of us working in the context of ageing and institutionalisation - it's a wonderful treat.
Maria Lassnig, Hospital 2005, oil on canvas, 150 x 200 cm © Maria Lassnig Foundation
Heads in the Women's Ward
On pillow after pillow lies
The wild white hair and staring eyes;
Jaws stand open; necks are stretched
With every tendon sharply sketched;
A bearded mouth talks silently
To someone no one else can see.
Sixty years ago they smiled
At lover, husband, first-born child.
Smiles are for youth. For old age come
Death's terror and delirium.”
Philip Larkin, Collected Poems
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