Two Bites of the Apple

I: Scrub That

Braunschweig, the artist, uses, employs, must have, in essential requirement, to make his art, a hardware shop scrubbing brush of time-immemorial unchanging weight and shape, hard bristles set in a vaguely figure-eight wooden base or grip, as used by his mother, as probably yours, to scrub the linoleum in the kitchen, bathroom, toilet (only it was called the lavatory then), outside too, the concrete, the steps, and his scrubbings, or marks, as the learned cognoscenti love to pronounce, whether on bounce of Belgian linen, the rasp of rough-grained canvas, the slick anonymity of smooth-faced board or card, whichever or whatever to hand, likewise of meditated moment or simply seized, algebraic wisdom, rush of blood, to begin, let’s say, bristle tips of dipped no-colour watered black, in tenderest touch, a stipple of spots, a scribble of briefest braille, that first sprinkling of lightest rain upon placid lake’s waiting face, perhaps the crease of passing breeze…