Back from Amsterdam yesterday morning where I imagined I had resolved a large painting of a white tiger skin clad shaman figure.
-The picture has this figure as the central image, underlined by a caput mortuum line on which sits a silhouette of a stranger, found in a street in Prague. It reminds me of my father as a young man and the moment of discovery was rather special, listening to friends (Art and Allenna and others) talking outside a cafe.
I liked the stripes of the tiger - interfered them with two mosquito's. Flies and blood sucking airborne things, l have studies of them...
The caput mortuum line demanded a balance which arrived easily in a beech branch. Ref my early schooling; the young sculptor discovered in the walled garden, carving a beech trunk blown down in the storm. Who was he?
And the image summoned and threatened by the shaman is the roundabout, symbol of life and its vagaries, drawn from the one outside the museum Matisse in Nice. Poor Matisse, merchandised to death. But the olive grove and the roundabout and the people taking tea were nice.
Thinking that the area under and above the cm line and under the badly resolved tiger needed attention, I considered it all week whilst in Amsterdam. Eventually it seemed that the black and white of the tigerskin could carry another interference in the form of a magpie - which led to the thought of another above the claw, for balance and for luck. Which transmuted during a visit to the Queens Palace into angels in the sky...
Back in the studio it seems I am wrong, this work would simply clutter the picture. All it needs is some prussian around the trees by the carousel.
And today I am working in Campagne-sur-aude at the house of Ferren Macintyre. Last week -before Amsterdam - I started a long-promised mural on the idea of cave paintings. The materials are as authentic as poss., walnut, earth, charcoal, soot, wax etc. The wall is fabulously smooth and most of my endeavors so far involve trying to spot the flaws to get the shape of the emerging animals.
My bike has a flat. I have to wait for the bus happy to walk home but not use my energy beforehand. Also, its really cold. Winter snuck in while I was away.
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