Mike Bignold - tarot
card restoration artist (drawings) 1899 - 1920.
When the project was explained to Mike, he laughed until
his face hurt. Two days passed while the artist drank tea,
meditated on the task ahead and perfected the preparations.
There were 163,000 crayons, each a different color. There
were three pairs of spectacles, which he often wore all at
the same time, a remarkable array of quills, pens, pencils,
erasers and a stack of blank, white paper. Finally, when everything
was ready, Mike tidied the garage.
But soon the job was under way, the laughter was under control
and Mike was under the table on a single Scotch. The drawings
began to emerge at a dazzling rate. They were drawn, redrawn,
lost, mixed up and found again. Mike grasped the idiotic spirit
of the project faster than any artist known to man. Improvisation,
interpretation and extrapolation followed, until he became
alarmingly cavalier about the placement of bats and buckets
in the illustrations. Friends began to worry.
His segregation from the other patients eventually afforded
him the opportunity for escape. Disguised as a Buddhist Llama,
he blended quietly into the English landscape and was last
seen climbing a crag in the drizzle. |
