The return to the shroud site is always exciting. The bodies are exquisite to behold in their compelling grotesque beauty. The perfection as they lay in state gradually decomposing, but its what lay beneath, the hidden image that is revealed which I anticipate and seek. With all the debris still attached, feather and claws, dirt and blood, excrement, leaves, there is an embodied stain. But it is the cleansed stain, the returning smooth surface on which I wish to paint that compels me to brush most of it away. I may form attachments to a little remaining, as evidence of solid matter, to give the encounter a little more of process. While the magpie is alluring, it is the bottom cockatoo which surprises. Like an angel this image is born from death with white wings and blackened body, headless in flight. I play with its body still in tact, in love with its perfection in death and hang it on the shroud tree where a large spitfire crawls. The echidna is still too moist, I leave it, so frightened of a failure, longing for an imprint of its multiple spines.
Laomedia 