Author Archives: Robin

About Robin

Occasional painter. Golfer. Fascinated by humanity. Passionate about beautiful stuff, the people who create it and its narrative.

Bruce Bay cairns, New Zealand

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In Maori mythology, southern right whales (tohorara) have god-like status. Hoping to glimpse these increasingly rare beasts, tourists driving the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island stop at Bruce Bay. Weather permitting, people from every continent get out of their rented vehicles and stare out to sea. They have time on their hands. There is no café; only the road, the ocean and the rocks in between.

Bruce Bay 1

Something in this wild, beautiful place impels the visitors to leave hundreds of carefully balanced cairns. Some are simple; some show ingenious engineering skills; some are beautiful. All have a primitive appeal. Are they just marks of passing for the next tourist or is there at play some great whale-spirit?

Bruce Bay 2

Bruce Bay 3

Bruce Bay 4

Bruce Bay 5

I left my own cairn at Bruce Bay but I felt like an intruder. Reassuringly, it will have been washed away, like the others, in one of the great storms that lash this rugged coastline.

There is a Maori cemetery at the end of the beach.

Perfect Parrot

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“Perfect Parrot.” Were this the name of a chique new cocktail bar, it would not be surprising to find this picture, discretely but emphatically lit, centrally placed and imposing itself on the fashionable clientele. It would probably be the motif on place mats and elegant little menus. And maybe, sipping a pinacolada, a party-goer might just notice that there is in fact, no parrot; and that the exquisite colours, which without doubt bring to mind a notion of “parrot,” are perfectly balanced in form and tone. He or she might realise that the eye-comfiness is augmented by the dark marginal line serving as a frame to be both respected and encroached upon. With further reflection, he or she might conclude that the sophistication has been further amplified by child-like application of the paint whilst the forms and colour choices are far from childlike.

Perfect Parrot

But …. “Perfect Parrot” was painted by a child! Josephine is eight years old. She comes from Indonesia. She has huge brown eyes and a dazzling row of very white teeth. Her enthusiasm for anything creative is irrepressible. Her mother showed me “Perfect Parrot” painted at school. What did I think? My response might have included the word “exquisite.” But it was not a matter of what I thought. It was what I wanted to know. “Josephine, what was in your mind when you painted this? Who did you paint it for? What made you choose those colours? Why did you put the line around the edge? Why did you call it “Perfect Parrot” when I can’t see a parrot?” “Don’t know!” She laughed and skipped away. You first saw her potential at talkingbeautifulstuff.com.

Graffiti in Rome: vandalism or beautiful stuff?

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Each and every ground-level wall in Rome carries some scratching, scribbling, scrawling or spraying. Suffering enough from lack of public spending, the Italian capital is made only shabbier and sadder by the ubiquitous graffiti. This is vandalism on a grand scale.

But, up close, individual pieces are fascinating. Is this beautiful stuff? You don’t know who the “perpetrator” is. (Interestingly, one assumes that it is a young male!) What he is saying and to whom may not be obvious either. It may be a targeted insult, a statement of “this is our patch,” a declaration of love or support for a political movement. The media vary and may even date their application. Obviously, the older and more durable involve chipping or scratching into the wall whilst the newer and less durable are paint and chalk. Old and new alike submit to the flaking and crumbling of Rome’s backstreet walls. The result is something raw, mysterious, time-sensitive and even elegant. There is such a concentration of these pieces that they overlap and a chronology can be deduced. At the end of a long hot day and having walked the city for kilometres, I feel these walls proffer a glimpse into the soul of today’s Rome.

Graffiti in Rome 1

“PACE” is scratched deep into a repaired wall: a plea for peace dating back to World War II? A bizarre red and orange cockerel-like figure with an undecipherable thought-bubble is painted after the faded white spray paint and after a poster has been torn down. Blue spray last? Oops!

Graffiti in Rome 2

The clean beige paint on this section of wall without doubt covers other graffiti. The opportunistic wielder of a blue spray-can chooses to attack this fresh surface but meticulously respects the margins given by the cactus pot and the marble ledge. Is the Dilbert-like character with tie, spotty left ear and rectangular lips an uncle, a neighbour or a politician?

Graffiti in Rome 3

This hammer and sickle was probably painted during the cold war. Does the red tip of the sickle signify a bloody revolution to come? Or Mussolini’s blood?

Recently (February 2013), a purported Bansky “mural” in London has been taken – on its wall – for sale in Miami for US$ gazillions.