Cataract
by John Berger

Dear Leon,

I still remember clearly the first time I visited you in your studio, or the room you were then using as a studio. It was some 40 years ago. I remember the debris and the omnipresent hope. The hope was strange because its nature was that of a bone, buried in the earth by a dog.

Now the bone is unburied and the hope has become an impression, achievement. Except that the last word is wrong, don’t you think? To hell with achievement and its recognition, always conditional. But a hope of redemption has been realised. You have saved much of what you love.

All this is best not said in words. It’s like trying to describe the flavour of garlic or the smell of mussels. What I want to you to do.

The first thing painters ask about a studio-space usually concerns the light. And the light of a studio or a studio as a kind of conservatory or even a very white lighthouse. And of course light is important. But it seems to me that a studio, when being used, has more kin to a stomach. A place of digestion, transformation and excretion. Where images change form. Where everything is both regular and unpredictable.