The Kitchen
Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay
When I came back from Vietnam I was pretty excited about this orphanage request, I wanted to start a collaboration. I thought that I could get my students and a bunch of old computers and head over there for a workshop.
But there was something that did hold me back even at that time. Which was the question of enduring and permanent change.
Anything that was going to be a temporary distraction was really not going to help anyone but us; myself, who would be using this to advance in my teaching and research career, and my students, who would get a huge explosion of ideas and understandings. For those kids, for that orphanage, it would be like hosting a G8 summit; the glow of warmth and significance and then nothing but an emptier-than-usual larder.
Anything to do with computers and technology dies as soon as somebody doesn’t understand how to fix something, and that something can be as small as how to turn something on. Of course, we could have run around and found local people to get involved.
But wouldn’t the orphanage have thought of that? Anyway, I’m sure that now, in 2013, there are enough cheap tablets to go round, and plenty more where they came from.
Events caught up with me, and I didn’t do the project, the collaboration. Even then I was really not confident that I could do something that wouldn’t be a waste of their time. I am in two minds about this action that I have taken, this action of doing nothing but spend eight years thinking about what I could do.
If Bill Gates did nothing but sit around thinking about how to cure the world’s malaria, it would achieve as little as I have achieved. Which is nothing.
If we had done something and one child had been positively influenced in some way it would have been better than this nothing. Even just gathering some money together and sending it to the orphanage would have been better than this nothing, surely.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
There are many situations I think after reading the article and sinking into the art piece where, instead of looking at things in perspective, solutions can be seen and found by throwing all caution about it to the four corners. Nothing gets solved by non investment. Passion and imaginative discourse make a mighty force.
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sandshoe, passion and imagination, mighty words, necessary to any work of art, real art ,not just skill…
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I thought about that, shoe, when I got the email about my cat dying, suggesting that I go to see him. I thought: I would have done that, in the past. But my more recent years, they seem to have taught me that the mistakes I make, in being overly optimistic about recovery, will not be rectified. I could not afford to do it.
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It’s so true, helvi. I think it’s not so accurate, hph. I’m hoping to do better, gerard.
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I thought the spirit of the cat here is also representing the spirit of the orphan, or, the spirit of the cat is reminding us the spirit of the orphan?! …Maybe not!
I saw your other paintings too and I like the colours in them. I saw Van Gogh colours. Nice.
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I can only speak for myself, hph. The orphans, I don’t know them, my connection to them is idealistic. The cat, I lived with him for a long time, and we were like family.
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Lehan, you are right,, not only do we think but we also talk a lot, we are all experts, the new experts on everything, we air our views on internet, we write a lot but we do not achieve much, perhaps nothing.
So much easier to just talk and write about something than to actually to DO something, to fix orto improve…
Lovely painting, that is an achievement.
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or to improve
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Helvi, I was watching an iView of the new consumer show Checkout. While I grew tired of the Chasers, this one is a goodun. There was one nice piece of satire when a person was introduced as “an expert” and the reporter asked “An expert at what ?”. To which the reply was “I’m just an expert – look, this is TV, what do you care ?” Spot on !
There was also an excellent myth busting moment when it was revealed that while many people think it’s good to but say Dairy Farmer’s Milk because it helps farmers more than the cheap coles and woolies brands – and it might be a bit better quality. It costs as much as twice the cheap brands. Anyway, it was revealed that all the supermarket milk goes through the same two processors – somebody and Parmalat and that it is all the same stuff. Exceptions are one or two smaller brands that go direct from farmers co-operatives. Can’t remember them – so watch the show – Checkout Episode 4.
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I saw one episode and liked it, their comedy sketches were getting a bit boring, that happens to the best of them…
I’ll make sure we will not miss it….also there’s supposed be a good Danish show starting on SBS, I think on the 24th this month…Borgen?
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The orphan and the cat are one, in your paintings, Lehan.
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It reads sad but the painting is one of your best.
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