Paradoxically I stood there staring at it and found that It felt as though I was looking inside my head,heart...consciousness. I had this tremble in my soul first when I was in my early 20s,long ago and at the same time I remember it all clearly. The painting then was by De Kooning, it was his retrospective at the Tate(even before the Tate Modern existed). Each room dedicated to different decades, the paintings of the late 70s were my culprits. I think they were painted from a visual source,a view perhaps then abstracted as the paint seemed to embody an energy of a moment.
So back to it then, if you find yourself in Edinburgh for this August go to the Talbot Rice Gallery. There are some beautiful paintings by the late Craigie Aitchison that slow the world down to arrangements of colours delicately painted yet possessing a force that cannot be ignored. There is a painting entitled 'holy island', If you want to feel what colour can do then please stand in front of this painting and just breathe.
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