Nigel Hutchinson
Crimes of Passion
“A painting requires as much fraudulence, trickery and deception as the perpetration of a crime.” Edgar Degas
It looks like they’ve been here before us,
executing drive-by paintings;
by the M40 there are Paul Nash trees,
just opposite John Lewis;
his brother John has left an oak tree
on a slope in the Chilterns;
later, on the edge of the hills,
as the motorway cuts through,
someone has filled the panorama
with a breathtaking, bravura Dutch landskip,
all aeriel perspective and louring sky
(ignore the power station)
In spring Stanley Spencer must be busy,
every blossoming hawthorn is his and
over there Samuel Palmer
is doing the apple trees;
winter, and Rowland Hilder gets to work,
drawing tree skeletons on the sky.
In France, Interpol has evidence
that Cezanne’s repainted Provence
and Monet’s done the skies;
every copse of poplar the work
of Corot, occasionally Uccello,
moonlighting from painting battles.
Page(s) 23
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