It’s been well documented that David Schoffman has an avid fascination for birds. In a 1995 profile in Prague’s Nový Prostor, Schoffman spoke at length about the maniacal mewl of the Silesian Eagle Owl, a bird whose enveloping wingspan and conspicuously ornate facial disc are legendary throughout Central Europe. In the same interview David described the six months he spent in Sri Lanka studying the Spotted Dove and the Ashy-Headed Laughing Thrush. “I drew constantly,” he said, “trying to depict the rapture of flight and the showers of light as they played off of the brilliant infinitude of brown and gray. It was a painter’s paradise and “Chanticleers and Columbiformes,” my series of hand-colored monotypes would have been inconceivable without this seminal experience.”
What David failed to mention in the article was the string of damp beds, the pangs of unembroidered poverty, the galling feuds and oppressive doubts that characterized that six-month sojourn. I remember receiving letters full of odd hallucinations, paranoiac fantasies and erotic misadventures. Names like Mosby the Sailor, Silas The Street-Prophet, Mufti Sam and Lalima filled his rambling missives that read more like novels and irate manifestoes. To this day I am unsure how much of what he wrote was true and how much was fantasy.
That was many years ago, and David has been leading a productively sedate, even boring existence for some time. I am happy that Prolix Press has recently re-issued “Chanticleers and Columbiformes” in limited edition. It is a sobering reminder that the wages of disquiet, traded by the gifted hand, can yield precious monuments to our more noble selves.
No comments:
Post a Comment