265. Popsicle 2 (Capri-eis 2)
265. Popsicle 02 (Capri-eis 02), 2026, Öl auf Leinwand, 40 × 30cm
What do you call this? In my early childhood in Ireland, we called it an ‘ice pop’. In Australia in my boyhood we called it an ‘icy pole’. Even in Germany it seems to be called variously a ‘Wasser-eis’ or a ‘Capri-eis’. However, I think I am leaning toward a fairly neutral ‘Popsicle’. It seems like an international thing. Did you have it in Japan or Kenya? Did you have it in Norway or Iceland? I wasn’t completely happy with my first version, so I changed it a little bit and then I produced this second version that shows more of the person holding this fruity Excalibur of the imagination.
The new shoots from the hedge are reaching up. At first, I thought the hedge was dying. Now it is very thick. At first, I wanted it to be a hedge with height just under eye level, so we could still easily talk to the neighbors. However, these new shoots are up to 3.5 meters high in places and I am loving it. These new shoots are very visually evocative for me. I can understand why people put images of new shoots on wine labels or T-shirts. They are spindly, hopeful, optimistic, reassuring, a bit like childhood in general. I have been waiting to tell somebody about these shoots all week. However, life just seems too busy, even though this week I was bowled over with exhaustion and had to spend a day in bed after painting a lot and enduring endless interrupted nights from two unsettled children. In theory I could paint the new shoots of the hedge. However, they are just too spindly and delicate for me to paint. Not that I am particularly ham-fisted, but it would be just like painting a spider’s web, not something I can really integrate with my approach. Perhaps it will have to remain instead here, in a blog post about a completely unrelated painting. Hedges are so much better than fences.
In the middle ages my village had a wall. You can walk along the site of the old wall today. And the wall had four gates. The village had quarters and from what I understand the quarter tended its gate. Life was fairly dangerous with wayfaring conquerors roving the land during the middle ages and the wall and the gates successfully stopped the town from being invaded. Towns could be besieged, but towns with a high perimeter wall and a freshwater spring and some fields could withstand a siege relatively well. What I sometimes wonder is: is there an intransigence to taking on new ideas that have not entered by the correct gate? A hedge is a permeable, living membrane. A wall is statement. Anyway, today the old wall is a path available for anyone to walk, even to enjoy your popsicle on.
