28 09 2017

Studio getting done, I'm rather impressed with myself.... big cupboard moved and re-stacked, cleared enough space to make visiting cards for Magrie [cut up x-rays, wrote on then in correcting fluid, nice] Got the press release done for Magrie too. Also nice. Rome show still on cards.All good really, except I'm not painting. Hanging tomorrow, show weekend. Will take kindle and make it a holiday.

22 09 2017 Friday

Watercoloured by the river this morning, loved it - the calm quiet of river sitting, the pleasure of slapping paint. Results iffy but maybe will work them up.
Rome show looks like it might have legs...
and have been writing application for artist in res that has caused me to consider my practice and life. Discover that I'm reconciled to death.

20 09 2017 Weds

If  I didn't draw on a Monday I'd do no work at all. I did draw on Monday, Joachim, only 6ish others there and very intense and pleasurable it was too. Haven't had time to look at the results.
Got a card from a friend in Rome. We're talking tomorrow about a prospective show.

15 09 2017

VERY impressed with myself. Have moved all portfolios to studio 1, where they simply block a corner of stored materials. Have moved the rack across a window in studio 1. Moved all pending stuff on the cartoon book to a large chest. Next is to clear over and under table so I can decant the wall unit and move it.
First, off to the cafe (in the rain) for coffee with Claudinne.

11.10.2017 monday

Monday, drawing... and really like several of todays efforts. 10-odd artists, nicely focused. Model Joachim from Belgium, rather a superior and beautiful man.
Have halved one of the drugs I take and cut out another, the rest remain and probably because I'm thinking about it I feel frisky and fit. Plus Bobs away and I have no-one to please but myself, a dog, a tortoise, a rabbit and three parrots. They take a surprising amount of time daily.
The big project that is looming is the clearing of studio 2 to build the bathroom. Which means clearing studio 1 to get stuff into. Main problem is the rack of portfolios  and indeed the portfolios. How badly do I need x large portfolios of old work? Can't actually carry that many without help or I'd plonk them all in the winter bedroom pro tem. But I can't do the stairs with them.
Suspect that old work I don't reference should get swaddled in polythene and move to garage storage. That'll be a fun day.

10.09.2017

Sleepless night, oh the blessings of insomnia. Decided yesterday to check drawings ( needed  to sort out selection for the Magrie show) and found in the first portfolio I opened some really good work. Hurrah. Selected and mounted some. Next portfolio was mixed, and thereafter crap. The best were banal and mostly the drawing was plain bad - not experimental failures, just bad drawing. Inauthentic response to model, in some sense or other. Ouch.
Thinking about it... the best were from 2014.  Bloody awful after.
Presumably the best went from the Depftord drawing expo., kept no records but lots went.
The significant thang is the downhill of the last three years and Im wondering if this is health related. Cant remember when I started on what meds and why but maybe should check.

09 09 2017 Sat

One of those dreams... went to clear my stuff out after doing a large painting on a church wall. Hard to see for the baptismal font (new style) and general church clutter in the way, pews, screen. Wondered why I'd sited it so badly. Then I saw it; had forgotten it and was amazed. It showed the back of a mans head wearing a renaissance cap, dark blue velvet, his long black hair showing under it, with his hand in front of him. He was conducting the fair man who faces the viewer, who is singing. So beautifully painted it seemed to move, full of movement, without being photo realistic. Metallic and luster paint, lots of copper tones.
A photographer came in from the local paper to take the snap. I was so proud of this picture. I said, I'm the artist. He said that I should stand there and be included, like they do. And I understood that he hadn't even looked at the picture. That no-one had seen it or was going to. The best thing I'd done in my life. No-one would see it.

Hey ho.

Sold 4 of the old food pix yesterday, I have many left but they are the ones that haven't sold over many years so not the most appealing then. The money isn't enough to pay my femme de manage's bill.

Hey ho.

But life is good. Dabbling in studio.

05 08 2017 Tuesday

After last weeks drawing I was avid for yesterdays' - ha! Same model, more artists (10) but it didn't come together. Crap, actually. Moved into watercolour and a nice paper (Khandi fine) which was better but still crap. May work on them today...l suppose a predictable outcome would be the death of trying, lala, but scrabbling in the darkness has limited appeal.
Off to coffee, then a clear stretch in studio.

03 09 2017

While in the south got the email to say the NOA had rejected me... hardly unexpected but embarrassed that the family have to pick up the work. Another vow never to do this again, again.

Got the pix back from Oumouh, all straightforward. Have corrected some craqulure which he liked and I didn't. Ready to be humiliated at Magrie now. Really running out of the energy necessary for this bollox.

And ha!! The one drawing I liked from Monday lay on top of a pile on a table in the second studio. Under the jasmine, which was flowering, which dotted the drawing with whatever it is that falls from the flowers. Sticky smelly stuff. Nice, but it doesn't help.

Going to knock some space off the studio to make an extra bathroom. Maybe I should turn the studios into bedrooms and let them.