Picture thanks to Celia Paul.
This journal entry was composed on November 15, 1978, just after my nineteenth birthday, prior to Lucian Freud took me to meet Frank Auerbach for the very first time.
And the anxious head-jerks and spins of a wild bird. He gets you nervously, tentatively in the beginning and then aggresses you, kissing you as though he would certainly drown you, then as suddenly withdraws and with a severe, abstracted expression, approaches the hall.
That night, he stated that he was just about to have a bath when I got here so would certainly I mind waiting. I muffled the flooring in the hall, next to one of Rodin’s wonderful Balzac sculptures, honored and tubby, and listened to the mild lapping of the water, my heart working in nervousness at the thought of the encounter with Auerbach. Lucian wanders via the hall, from washroom to room and back again with a purple towel connected around his waistline, casting me a smile to mix my roots with such an endearing anxious head contortion. I continued to rest for a while, trying to convince myself that the silence is serene as opposed to unpleasant. He joins me currently, completely outfitted, and we’re off, to meet Auerbach. As Lucian arrives, he rests one hand on my knee– this loads me with such cozy pleasure. All the traffic lights are environment-friendly for us. We arrive at Auerbach’s house. Lucian ventures out and experiences eviction and follows the indication “to the workshops” down a flight of steps and closes the door. The house is Victorian and somehow castle-like– perhaps the full moon lent an ambience. It was in between even more Victorian houses …
Celia Paul is a visual artist.