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John Freeman lives in Cardiff. His latest collection is Landscape with Portraits (Redbeck Press, 1999). Life Someone who had studied the question wrote: "Opening out and closing down: that's all it does." I see what he meant. We expect a middle bit, the show itself, the point. To say there isn't one is perhaps to say look for the point and show in the bits there are. Energy, movement, growing physical shapes with intricate form, pulsating, never still even in hibernating animals. Energy, matter, form - and something more important than these: desire and fear, pleasure and pain, the thirst and the drinking, wine of life, the throat. The Old Garden Lilac trees lavender bushes michaelmas daisies chinese lanterns loganberries tomatoes blackcurrants Cox's Orange Pippin mint foxgloves red hot pokers hollyhocks clematis ivy Russian vine grass dandelion clover nettle ground-ivy suckers of plum earthworms ladybirds gnats flies earwigs centipedes sparrows blackbirds bluetits pigeons seagulls cats the occasional fox roses begonias polyanthus bluebells daffodils forget-me-nots loose-strife chrysanthemums privet damson oak rake pickaxe spade fork trowel compost-buckets bird-table compost heaps bonfires shears |