New paintings and regular art updates.
Do you ever just get stuck in your thoughts. Lost and not quite sure what to do or where to go. Marathon prevarication. Held back by thinking too much. And heat doesn’t help. You wait in hope that it might cool down. Your mind isn’t working, it’s fused in place, clunking, square thoughts jammed in a round hole. You just want to break out of it. Find a way through. Maybe in a while I will feel more like myself.
Artrage oils and photodirector used to make these slightly worried faces in a crowd. Perhaps I should have given one of them a mask? They certainly feel crammed together. And what are they watching? Why are they there? Is it something pleasant or unpleasant? Who can say. From the depths of my mind to the page. I sometimes don’t know what’s coming!
Rough sketches, three panel wordless piece. I experimented with colour and the positioning of the panels. Also could it be a front, side or top or bottom view of the cat and of it breaking out through the cat flap? Could the sequence change? What are the cats emotions? Why does it want to get out? Fear, adventure, looking for a friend? Lots of reasons, even sunshine….? Or a bird it’s seen singing outside… Oh dear!
I decided to use bits of post-it notes and monoprint and combine them in a tangle of colours. Do they link up with each other? It is a representation of my MA land. When you work on a college course there is so much to absorb and take in. Lots of information that needs to cross the book/ brain barrier via your eyes. The ever expanding reading list tries to force you to take in knowledge, but it’s not always easy to sift the relevant from the irrelevant. The clarity of words is not always there. I try to write clearly when I’m blogging, but if you have to take a dictionary with you when you try and read a piece of information, then you have to ask whether the author is being elitist.
Other problems with online courses are the lack of face to face contact. You can try and have zoom meetings or their equivalent. But it does feel sometimes like you are working in a vacuum. My desk is tiny, my pc and keyboard and screen take up about 75% of the space. It’s hard to find enough space to work in. My sketchbooks are getting smaller in proportion to the increasing number of them. So much drawing over the last year!
I started with all good intentions this morning and wrote about 500 words of a 4000 word project I’ve got to do for my illustration course. But then things got in the way. We had an avalanche of carrier bags (my hubby buys them all the time). I put them by the washing machine but today they all slid down onto the floor. Cue a lot of folding and an offer to take them to the local food bank.
Then the cat decided she wanted a cuddle, she jumped up on the keyboard and knocked me out of the page I was on.
Hubby wanted to chat… Shuddup! Then Microsoft decided it wanted me to verify who I was before it would let me back into Word? What, how do you do that. I was halfway through a paragraph, had gone to have something to eat and came back to that!
Ugh!
When you open up Facebook you don’t expect to hear that a friend has passed away. Someone who I admired. A good artist and a compassionate and sensitive man.
I guess I would rather find out than not know at all. Waiting to see if he would post new art, or a post about how he was feeling. He went missing for a couple of months about two years ago. He eventually turned up and everything turned out OK.
Now, I don’t know. I guess I’m glad I met him on a website and saw his art, he lived in a different country so we were never going to meet up. But that doesn’t matter, he was a very good artist and was a thoughtful person.
I lost another friend in a similar way last year. This was a woman from overseas. Another artist.
The internet allows people who would never normally meet to find each other. At least I’ve found out what has happened. Feeling very sad.
Are you turning into instagram?
What are all these new buttons?
Easier or more complex?
My brain is struggling
To keep up with unwanted changes!
I was driving with gears
Now you’ve given me an Automatic
taken away the clutch
but not told me where the brakes are!
Is that fair?
I’m a blogger
not a programmer
or coder
or whatever
these newfangled things are?
Thanks?
1/10 so far….
Along the pier
Walk out to Sea
Across the tide
My life to be?
An old man thinks
Of times gone by
Boyhood days
Of gulls and skies.
Of storms and fog
Waves rolling high.
A girl goes skipping
The length of the pier
In the arcades
Candy floss, she cheers.
A woman now
Looks back in time.
Worm eaten memories
Are lost in rhyme.
From young to old
Each person’s regrets
Are tied together
In their own nets.
Sea and sand
Cliffs and rock
All remembered
As the gulls flock.
Another day of a bug. I don’t think it’s covid, I think it’s some sort of cold. I ache and I’m tired, but I don’t have the covid symptoms thankfully. I usually go outside wearing a mask. But one day last week I forgot. But as I was not going in any shops I thought I’d be OK. But perhaps someone sneezed or coughed? And I try to stop breathing for a few seconds as I walk passed people….
I guess there will be a lot less bugs about as we sheild ourselves from the Pandemic. But it doesn’t mean there aren’t other illnesses out there. Waiting for some throat or nose to lodge in, or to be caught on your hand by touching a surface with bacteria or viruses that have landed on it.
Life… A convoluted mix of luck and confusion.
Uneven surface as tree toots push through. Top path around Westport lake, between the lake and the canal. On the left, canal barges were lined up, sometimes occupied, others shuttered. A couple sat on deck chairs, chatting. Wearing warm coats. I think they had cups of coffee to warm themselves.
We carried on round the lakes again, sometimes surrounded by clouds of black flies, sharp ovipositors sticking out their rear ends like massive bee stings. I think they were attracted by the goose droppings on the paths. They were blown on the wind where the breeze pushed across the lake, but came back and surrounded us under the trees in the lee of the wind.
I’m glad I was wearing my glasses and a hat, and I was pleased to be wearing a mask, even though it was not really needed outside.
This week I’ve walked about twenty two miles, slightly less than the week before. But my toes and feet hurt. I’m getting quicker though….
