The duende…. Where is the duende?Through the empty archway a wind of the spirit enters, blowing insistently over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unknown accents: a wind with the odour of a child’s saliva, crushed grass, and medusa’s veil, announcing the endless baptism of freshly created things. –Federico Garcia Lorca

The concept of la duende was introduced to me through the poetry of Gabriel Garcia Lorca and, more recently, through an invitation to participate in an exhibition whose theme was The Search for Duende in visual art. This began a deeper recognition of the passionate, inexplicable struggle; the anguish and dark spirit of the creative imagination. The duende lives, unexplained, in the intimate and primal force which can sometimes animate my efforts. These works are an ode to this spirit which goes far beyond the intellectual concept of the muse, but *“has to be roused from the furthest habitations of the blood.”

* Theory and Play of the Duende, Federico Garcia Lorca