27/10/2014

Drew (Frederik) for two hours, standing up (me, not her -) using oil pastels and large cartridge paper. It was joyful and fun and my energy was strong - reminded of my student days when it was all possible, when problems have solutions.
Then thought, problems still have solutions. There are solutions. Whats this need to get the RIGHT solution? A question answered honestly is resolved. The right question is the thing really and Im very good at those...

The change has been entirely brought about by medicine which has bought my blood pressure down to merely high levels. Feel light and airy and capable. Can't remember when I last felt this well, certainly a couple of years ago if not longer. Determined to hang on to this new personna:) (Little voice whisphers; spes pathetica)

Off tomorrow with Kat and Margaret to paint in the mountains. We overnight with a friend of Kats, who feeds us, lets us use his estate to wander and paint on. There are deer. Couldn't quite work out how to approach this - fond though I am of landscape - then remembered the box of acrylics that Harry had packed for me from Simons estate. Plus I have a bunch of canvas boards bought a while ago with another project in mind, with a couple of small canvases.

Haven't used acrylics since 1969. Didnt like them, never went back to them, took all my friends' oils as they changed over. Delighted to have a new challenge so simply arrived at.

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 Hokusai, who at 75 added a postscript to the first printing of his “One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji”:

“From the time that I was 6 years old I had the mania of drawing the form of objects. As I came to be 50 I had published an infinity of designs; but all that I have produced before the age of 70 is not worth being counted. It is at the age of 73 that I have somewhat begun to understand the structure of true nature, of animals and grasses, and trees and birds, and fishes and insects; consequently at 80 years of age I shall have made still more progress; at 90 I hope to have penetrated into the mystery of things; at 100 years of age I should have reached decidedly a marvelous degree, and when I shall be 110, all that I do, every point and every line, shall be instinct with life — and I ask all those who shall live as long as I do to see if I have not kept my word.”

Hokusai died in 1849 in his late 80s, by all reports still far from satisfied with his work then in progress.