New paintings and regular art updates.
Sitting in the dark watching TV, the cat decided to jump up on the back of the chair. So I put my camera in selfie mode. I don’t look too good but I couldn’t focus in on the cat easily. She looks like she’s a bit unsure about the whole caper!
I’m busy trying to sort out some paperwork today, but I’ll be back later. I should get some photos in the garden of cherry and pear blossom if I get time.
I saw this at tonight’s performance and it made me chuckle. The way the lights are set up looks like eyes and a mouth. The shadow above like a set of long wolf like ears! The pinkness is really dramatic.
I have always seen faces and patterns in everyday shapes. Like paintings of flowers that look like lions to me, or the spindly abstract pattern of tree branches turning into a galloping horse. It’s a phenomenon called Pareidolia.
This could also be a riotous robot, a frankenstein style monster, or a dancing ghost, see what I mean?
Westport lake tree, off the beaten track, down a side path.
Somebody has taken a sign off this tree, they have left two “eyes” in place. My friend saw it first and it made me laugh. Is it an ent? Is it Treebeard… I can imagine a mouth and nose! It was good to escape even though it was drizzling and grey. Good to enjoy time outside.
What is one thing you would change about yourself?
My eyes are going fuzzy round the edges… My central vision is OK. I’m allowed to drive but I’m wearing sunglasses at night when I drive because it limits the glare from other cars headlights. My optician is monitoring them as eventually I should be able to have an operation to remove them. It’s making fine details difficult to see and it’s getting very frustrating.
Tell us about a time when you felt out of place.
I was a child and because my eyes were bad I couldn’t see where my parents were on a big beach. So I got lost, but luckily someone found me and I got back to my family. Then they found out I was short sighted, so I ended up with glasses.
Later I got lost trying to map read while my mom drove. I wasn’t very good at it, so we took the right road, but headed south not north. Eventually I realised I had gone wrong and we found our way home. After that I studied maps (on paper), so I knew where I was.
But feeling out of place can also be emotional. I used to do an important job and did it well, but I didn’t fit in with other staff members because they thought I was too soft with our customers. I started to feel very out of place. I think I suffered from imposter syndrome. I second guessed myself all the time, thinking I would get caught out for doing things wrong.
I’m glad I’m out of it. I want to feel I have a real place to be,
Stinging eyes after eyedrops. I’m having my retinas checked as I have a regular screening each year. I don’t like it because your pupils are enlarged so the nurse can photograph the back of your eye. It means I won’t be able to drive for six hours and I have to wear sunglasses to stop the glare of the sun. I can still just about see my phone screen but anything beyond that is getting blurry.
Still it’s good to know that I’m being looked after. At least the NHS is still taking care of people. When I get home I need to sort out another appointment for something else. It’s all go!
Drawn with dots at a now defunct site called sketchfu. The site had a colour picker, about six round brush sizes. An opacity/transparency setting, zoom option and a pallette. Not many tools, but simple to use and it attracted a lot of traffic (thousands of users). In the end the owners abandoned it, they ghosted us moderators (I was one) I think they sold the site off.
Eye see you looking out at me. What are you? A mishmash? A chimera….
An ape or monkey? Imagined monster, alien symbol.
Is that a volcano or a scientific flask full of acid. How were you created. Are you a figment?
Have you got whiskers or a moustache? Close set eyes stare back. A mythological owl.
Do those eyes hide a soul, will you start to howl? A dark night could hide you, are you foul or fowl?
Hours of staring
Looking, viewing
Taking time to see
What is moving
Running, twitching
What could it really be?
Cat is looking
Viewing, staring
Through the window wide
Keep the door closed
Keep him inside
Well away from the wild….
A felt pen and black ink doodle/sketch of different eyes. I found it hard to blend the colours of the pens because they dry quickly so you have to try and shade in thin layers and build them up. It’s only a small drawing and blowing it up a bit really shows up the blotchiness. Mind you when I paint I do find it hard to blend colours. I think that’s because I use acrylics which dry very fast as opposed to oils that can take a very long time to dry. I don’t do photorealism but I once had the local newspaper art critic talk about one of my paintings in his report about a local exhibition. He said if I wanted to be a photo realist I should try harder! I was insulted because a) I was not trying to be one and b) he didn’t ask me what my style was! I think it was lazy journalism. Filling up a couple of lines. But he didn’t see how much it upset me. And I still feel it, even years later!
Mallaband-Brown