Rachel Jones Gated Canyons

I, Rachel Jones, see mouths as Gated Canyons.
White my smile against the shade of my 
complexion. Nigra sum sed, o, formosa.
Cartoon teeth appear in coloured abstracts -
tombstones jumping loosely in a jaw.
The teeth are barriers to tunnels leading 
to my inner self, my deepest feelings
given vent in coloured oils and pastels
painted not with brushes but my fingers, 
relishing the contact with the canvas.
My art is all I know about myself,
the motley of my flesh in different lights, 
emotions given utterance by mouth.
I'm black and Blackness is my subject matter.

Gated Canyons is my exhibition
at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.
My cue? The Hound by Pieter Böel painted
sixteen sixty, part of Dulwich's 
Collection. I can see the empty blackness
round the head creates an aura and 
intensifies the focus on the subject.
I admire the black gash of the mouth,
white highlights in the fur, shell ear, red eyes.
My favourite colour's red. My twenty nineteen
crimson lips emerge from brown flesh too.
They fill a paper scrap whose outline is
irregular, a fluid shape. I christen
it Spliced Structures making architecture
of the jaw. The teeth turn into bricks,
guard tunnels, clench or show through parted labia.
Patches of the larger canvases
I leave unpainted so the painted features
seem to float in an eternal void. 
They're diptychs left / right, up / down with one panel
in a shadow or behind a veil
and zigzag watery effects a-shimmer
in reflections in a pond. Is that
a penis flaccid through the clouds like yellow
testicles? Anatomy turns into 
landscapes, distant mountains, rivers,
rugged hills. Pink lips are sealed, a smile
goes green and cartoon Betty Boop ends with
a purple raspberry of a kiss. Love you!