A dress in porcelain, an infant’s shoe patterned with moths, a faint imprint of a smock on soft white paper, a palimpsest. Well, ‘palimpsest’ was the closest I could get – a lost glance, an arrival, something erased. Visual artist, Jayne Simpson’s amazing debut exhibition caught my attention in late 2007. Prompted by the birth of her daughter, Isabella, Jayne’s work negotiated disturbing territory. Was this a celebration of becoming, or loss? - her subject, absent, a memorial in white, the impact of red in ‘Blood Ties’ her only colour. On my second visit I wanted to find the words. I emailed my poem ‘Isabella’s Palimpsest’ to Jayne, and that started the whole collaboration thing rolling. A few months later I attended the Contemporary Arts venue at UCLAN. Jayne’s ‘Palimpsest Dress’ now rendered the poem, literally, as fading text, an accommodation that fragmented imagery in the folds of the dress, in the run of ink bleeding back into the fabric. Image – imagery – image, we’d come full circle. And yes, if I could paint, I probably wouldn’t write.
