A little perspective

Blimey, what a week, and what a day. Ive just got back to my studio after a jaunt into the countryside; primarily to visit a portrait client but I also took the opportunity to scrump a huge bag of apples and pick the last of the blackberries on the way(its apple and blackberry crumble for me tomorrow...!). Seeing as I had nothing to transport, bar the apples, I took my rickety little bicycle rode up over my beloved South Downs, down the other side at breakneck speed and on the way back managed to break my bike chain with 5 miles to go so had to freewheel the last five miles down to the sea. One the positive side it highlighted that Im not as unfit as id thought (a 30mile round trip, half uphill is a good test) and best of all I enjoyed a moment of joyus perspective, standing on Devils Dyke (one of the hills of the downs) looking out over the Weald (big flat bit between the South and North downs), surrounded by the busy, living quiet of a hillside copse and everything bathed in the hot pastel shades of a dying sun, backed by the hazy gold of an almost autumnal moon. The perspective being that no matter how tricky life can feel in the center of a busy city, tennis balled back and forth from house to studio, bank to gallery, how startlingly important the minor grievances of tumultuous relationships or gradual depletion of a dwindling bank account may seem, the world goes on. The grass continues to grow, rabbits go on eating the grass, foxes go on eating rabbits. The sun rises, the sun sets; the world continues to turn. In our urban hives of industrious existence, where everything is designed, everything is placed so carefully, observed by so many and worried about perpetually its kind of comforting to think that outside of ourselves the living world en mass just...continues.

The trouble with dreams...

I had a horrific day of confusion and irrational upset yesterday, my work seemed trivial and shallow and I felt utterly lost and directionless, a long way down a road that Id never meant to start on in the first place. So I watched scrubs for 4hours, read for another 2 and resiststed the urge spend money I dont have on burger and chips. I then went to sleep for a good 10 hours 16 hours not working was a blow but I feel better for it and most interestingly everything that felt that it was missing in daily life was provided in the glorious technicolour or my lucid dreams.

Anyway. I'll press on as I have before, heres a work in progress of a painting that I didnt want to do but couldn't afford not to. Its coming out ok. I'll leave a proper post at some point soon.tata.

NB if when the large hadron collider i turned on it does happen to create a black hole that destroys life as we know it none of this will matter. What a cop out that would be...

Usualy a combination of love and fear

Profundity that can only come from the BBC.

It has been a trying day but I have to admit these things are minor enough to suck up pretty easily. The problem I have with trying to confront the little problems before me, following my passions is it leaves very little right to complain. Largely I am able to by enough paint to paint with, enough food to give me the energy to paint, I have the support of friends and family without suffocation and even at the worst of times in the last two years I have never wanted to be anyone but myself.

The Gallery project, Calico, appears to be in deep water. Or shallow, you can drown in both. Some times it can be tricky to juggle lots of balls when people keep throwing flaming torches in...

The painting requires a little more work on the fabric and the progress of that is throwing into perspective the inadequacy of the rest of the work. I also need to talk to the model more, I miss her whilst painting it (she is living in Canada and the work is being finished from photos).

Right. Nose back to the grindstone.

Letter to God

Here's something worth listening to, and thinking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KnGNOiFll4&feature=PlayList&p=AE14B7B3D9481ED3&index=0

aaand...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoN6XfyQsr4&feature=PlayList&p=AE14B7B3D9481ED3&index=3

When I began working on the painting of Delaney (shown in my first post) I was painting loosely, with expression. Ive found myself getting all tight and niggly again. It was partly a result of being distracted yesterday by company, its easy to become afraid of risks when you're under scrutiny. My own hang up there, but something I shall have to overcome. Isolation isn't always a luxury I'll be afforded.

I'll be meeting a new studio-mate today, to join Emma Mia and meself in the new studio at New Engalnd House, after which I'll be sorting out the next Calico exhibition. Forgot about that until 12.30am. Oopps.

Paintings to do...accounts to mess about with...biog to write...tata

Black coffee, Red wine, A day in words

Coffee, red wine and brocoli (raw, in a little tuperware tub), paint, an image appearing, running low on flake white, St Bartholemew's looming over recovering junkies out the window. French rap, the smell of turps and a discarded cork.

Two visiting brunettes, beans on toast and an impassioned debate on temparance, a little more red wine, some carrots...

Anglo-welsh terrane erotica

Reading someone's diary; that little journal stashed beneath the mattress or secreted away in a hidden drawer, is so often accompanied by that dizzy little fish-hook tug of excitement in the gut.

Reading a blog can often seem more like a secondary school comprehension task. Censored as it is for the public eye a blog requires no guilty fumblings in the dark crannies of the authors private quarters; readily published for all to see there is no stolen moment, left alone, in which to snatch brief morsels of thought from private pages. More's the shame.

Thought for yesterday...

I was walking up a hill in Brighton last night listening to an Anglo-Welsh poem about having sex with a mountain. It occurred to me how surreal some pretty mundane things can sound when you write them down. Now I have.


Right now...

There are people in the corridor outside recycling bottles. Its 1-bloody-am on a Sunday morning.


Something important...

I was sitting at a table eating a hasty dinner at 11pm before returning to my studio and thought... In the last three days I have found my drive once again, I knew it just needed a little time to come to terms with the upheval and now all I need is my work, food and sleep are physical neccesities that facilitate creation. How can people up in the morning with something like this to drag them? I admire their blind tenacity.



Tata.