I once had a cat. He was a light beige tiger cat, with crooked brown stripes and a white spot on his chest. A friend had found him on the side of a road outside of Seville. Someone had put him in a tied bag and thrown him from a car. He was barely one month old. My friend brought him back to Barcelona and called me to see if I wanted to adopt him.

I'd never had a cat before, but I kept him and named him Magritte. At mealtime he was so hungry that he would cry and run frantically between my legs, so that one day I ended up stepping on his tail and half of it had to be amputated. Since he was so small I was afraid that this would affect his sense of balance, but he recovered perfectly. He grew muscular and large, and with his surrealistic tail he went through life discovering things.

He was with me for three years, when I worked he would climb on my table and, seated, would watch. His eyes would follow the brush strokes I made, while the light filtering through the blinds highlighted his yellowish hair. I loved having him there; his striped hair contrasting with the grain of the wooden table, and drawings and paints. Occasionally he would try to play with the moving brush, but normally he was happy just looking. During the day I would ask his opinion about one piece or another, but his commentaries were at best laconic. However, he never broke anything, nor relieved himself on my work.

On weekends I would take him with me to the countryside. He didn't like the car, but knew it was worth the trouble. On arrival he would leap from the car and begin to play and explore the forest and its shadows. He always returned in time to eat and sleep, and once he brought back a lizard, lime-green, and left it for me on top of my paints.

One August I took him to Formentera on the ferry, it was a long trip, and when we arrived to the house, he escaped. I spent weeks calling "Magritte" throughout the area, and even hung posters with a drawing of him offering a reward. The German neighbors must have thought me mad; at any rate, none had seen the cat. In that part of the island there were many cats of all possible color, and at times I thought I saw or heard him between cactus and the shadows of fig trees, but it was never him.

After a month I returned to Barcelona saddened, although I've always preferred to think that Magritte decided to change his life, and now free, was enjoying life with his half tail.

Philip Stanton, 2000

***

Philip Stanton paints as he speaks: with an accent. And this peculiarity to transform words into something humorous, this accent, is the same thing that transforms the vases, cats, and cities that he paints into something different. An emotion which always involves us, and often, makes us smile.

At any rate, if we dare to enter into his paintings, apart from enjoying this tremendous chromatism, so Hockney, so Matisse, we discover a more mature artist, and whose work transmits a mystery which transcends all that, at first sight, seems terribly artistic and agreeable.

Tito Muñoz, 2000

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