Can Brea About

Chris Anthem is a painter living on Carn Brea, Redruth, Cornwall.

People wax on about coming down here “for the light”, for the landscape, the sea. For me it was the last place on earth. I came down here for rehab. 19 years of hedonism, indulgence, arrogance, and a general cock-a-snooting, a gallivant of years, a score minus one of of chemically brushed enthusiasm. It was end of the line stuff. I could go no further west. So I found a big granite rock and decided to stage my defense. Demons had already penetrated the corridors of the psychi – light was the last thing on my mind.

But I’ve seen the light of St Ive’s. Its not a myth. But its not around all the time. You have to have the right conditions. You have to forget about the town, the sense of it existing as a parody of itself. Its Llarrabug charms have long since gone. A friend once remarked -”If you look down on St Ive’s you see its even shaped like a trap”.