THE ART OF KIMBAL BUMSTEAD IN DREAM CATCHER MAGAZINE, EXTRAPOLATED BY GREG MCGEE

Journeys are better if the person making the journey knows that, to quote the American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson,  it's not about the destination, it's about the journey. Such seemingly pleasing platitudes intersect with poetry all the time. Self help, mindfulness, and positive hashtags are all healthy by-products of taking journeys, writing poems about journeys, and even repeating cliches about journeys. It's the surrender to the story as it is being written that is perhaps more liberating than closing the final page of the book. The screen-goes-black fate of TV mob boss Tony Soprano is eternally ambiguous, a blow to those who demand closure in their stories, but perfectly in line with his equivocal arc, and indeed the JukeBox song he selects in the final scene, Journey's (who else?) 'Don't Stop Believin''.  Virginia Woolf's Mrs Ramsay luxuriates in the freedom of the Shakespeare sonnet she reads whilst her husband sits opposite and silently judges her: unlike him, she is not a philosopher, and unlike him she eschews intellectual analysis to enjoy the freedom the poem: 

"And then there it was, suddenly entire, shaped in her hands, beautiful and reasonable, clear and complete, the essence sucked out of life and held rounded here: the sonnet."

The academic meaning of the sonnet may elude but the exploration of it thrills.

It is this free fall into Art that brings us to the latest collection by UK painter, Kimbal Bumstead. At times pulsing like phosphoresence, with luminous arabesques offset by playful plains of colour and wriggling, vivid marks, Kimbal's irrepressible mischief seems to stem from his striving rather than arriving. He obviously hopes the viewer is along for the ride too. 

“The subject matter isn’t fixed, it’s yet to be defined,” says Kimbal, “If the idea of journeying is the building block of the painting, the overarching theme is, I think, that there’s no destination. I love the process of trying to let go and getting lost in the painting. That’s a positive to me, and reflects on how I live my life. Stuff happens, you navigate it, and hopefully you enjoy the process. I like trying to see a street differently each time I walk down it, and the same goes for my paintings – each time I look at them I find something new, something I hadn’t noticed before."

It is the process then that provides the flame within both the creation of art and the consumption of it. The shifting, liquid light of Kimbal Bumstead's art is testament to this truth, as are many of the poems held in this very issue. Mary Oliver's 'The Journey' is perhaps the ultimate poetic touchstone:

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do –

determined to save

the only life you could save.

And then there's The Office's Andy Bernard: “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”

Poetry, painting, and platitudes. Here's to a great issue and a bright journey. 

Greg McGee