ROBIN RICHMOND: STONES OF THE SKY
 
“uninhabited poems, stretched between sky and autumn,
without people, with no transportation expenses -
for a moment I want no one in my poetry,
I don’t want to see man’s signs on the blank sand,
Footprints, half – buried papers, the stigmata of passing…”

Pablo Neruda (translation James Nolan)


I have had Neruda’s great cycle of poems Las Piedras del Cielo (Stones of the Sky) very close by my side for the last two years. When in doubt – and doubt is the companion of every artist – I have picked them up for courage. They have never failed me. Many of the titles of my paintings are drawn from these word landscapes, and as on the sands of Neruda's beloved Isla Negra, there are no footprints in my paintings.

Robin Richmond, March 2010