31 10 2020

 Absolutely nothing to justify my job description. Looking at inept pix and reading... oh the GSB piece for LoF finally edited and oven-ready thanks to the publishing team. I have no software to edit or even read - mercifully the team have dealt with it. Talking about using my drawings on the cover, though this may have been a devise to encourage me to edit the damn thing. Serve me right for biting off more than I can chew.

On which subject, tomorrow I start the preparations for a zoom lecture on arts and cybernetics. OMG.

29 10 2020

decreed that this is finished. Put it up on instagram where it has been re-interpreted out of its original thinking, that of drowned refugees. Never mind eh.

Got sent a certificate yesterday night, granting me the right to have FCybs after my name! I'm now a fellow of the cybernetics society. This morning a zoom with another cybernetic group wanting some artwork; plus a letter wanting an edit of a paper I've written elsewhere. All this stuff takes time and is only a hobby... but lockdown is here again, always a good chance to work.
 

28 10 2020

Survivors... so far. 

Vey wordy head. Not a good way to work though forcing such a deaf ear on myself that it might be OK.

 

27 10 2020

 Talk about fallow :) Yesterday was doctors for Bob, shopping, cooking; today is moving more furniture. Fiddled with a painting yesterday and see no way forward. Decided I so dislike the last that I will overpaint. 

Ces died yesterday, alone, of Covid; my vision only a week out of sync. I make no claims for it though.

24 10 2020

 Either fiddling, getting depressed or doing something else. Yesterday was devoted to moving furniture in chez Francois where Robin is moving in mid-november. Today I shall be painting some walls there. Green, since you ask.

Trying to suppress all arts notions and doing rather well.

21 10 2020

 Looking around the studio, struck by the comfortable petit bourgeoisness of the current output. Well tasteful. Most depressing. 

However, upheaval looms; furniture moving tomorrow and the day after plus a handful of commitments which will take me out of harms way and into another mode. Probably of rage at not being able to continue series. Sigh.

20 10 2020

 Fiddling; refinished tree, refinished first refugee, hating the ones I'm working on. Can't settle. Fortunately many interruptions.

19 10 2020

allegedly finished but not happy - with the colour of the towel  behind the head (which on the list is the same colour as the tshirt and I'm trying to be faithful), nor with the look of the thing. One option is to number the items but don't think that would work either. So have started another two to develop the theme, however miserable it is. Got today clear-ish.

 

18 10 2020

 Psychic experience, below, as inaccurate as most! Auntie Ces still doing well. Mother deluded, as ever - still convinced it was her.

Managed some work on the miserable itinerary of refuges that I'm on -

-troubled by Big Thoughts.

17 10 2020

Don't know where else to write this but want to write it.

Last night at 9.50 pm my mother 'appeared'; that is to say, she was suddenly and very clearly there. No sight of her, no smell or sound but there she was, herself and indisputably real, physical. This has not happened with her before. She wasn't addressing me though she wanted me to hear what she was doing, to whit, talking to my great aunt, who was confused. She, my aunt, has died.

Given that my aunt was 100 and in hospital with Covid this is a fair bet but waiting to hear.

14 10 2020

 Funny old business, art... wrestling with pedantic tree pic and two other little pix appeared, dealing with the deaths of refugees. Been making lists of the washed up detritus of the lives of the dead. Not much fun but the challenge of the things help. 

13 10 2020

 Bloody hell, it looks tasteful! Supposed to be an almondier wracked with angst - the escape of the soul, the slow growth, the position of the real tree etc etc. Still, not finished yet. Been working on it at the end of the day when the light is iffy, really not sure what's happening with it.

11 10 2020

 Decent afternoons work on the little canvases. Its a bit like pulling a tooth but I'm letting it shape its own pace. Its about death and aspriation; what else? Sigh.

10 10 2020

 Murphy has died, far sooner than was expected but by great good grace, according to his wife. Dear man. So yesterday lost - initially on a very good lunch and then, after the news reached me, in tears. How would it please him to have me mourn?

09 10 2020

 Had taken an internal vow not to continue work until the second studio was cleaned and the storage organised.

Oh la. Started - slowly and without enthusiasm - a series of little paintings around the tree en route to Pomas. Got caught up. This morning I like the results (intended to be a long thin piece). I do so like to paint.

07 10 2020

 Thrown into a total panic yesterday by the news that nephew Pads has covid-19 and is locked into his room at Glasgow University. Can't even open the window due to suicide locks. He was here just before lockdown and I really like him, so spent the morning making a package of fattening and tooth-rotting foods with little other things, a bottle opener made of a root from the vine, a scarf, that sort of thing. A chocolate croissant.

Obviously he is being monitored and cared for and as I was beginning to relax the news arrived about  niece Anna, who got struck at her university in Liverpool. Aggg more panic - I really LIKE these people! But they are young and fit. She got a card and earrings.

So a nothing day, queuing at post office (where I got hit by cigarette smoke, terrible) and forced to take extra breath stuff which caused frightening heart reaction.

Been doing some drawings though. Trying to shape up ideas. In no hurry.

05 10 2020

 After boozy lunch yesterday I invited John and Clare Rushton to see the new paintings - been thinking about them and seeing them together, finished, decided they were OK. Hence invitation. Not a good idea... they were clearly uncertain, 'is it finished?', that sort of response. Makes no difference, I could see what they thought and that was fine, my sense of completion wasn't disturbed.

Thinking of chalices now. Historical use. etc.

But plan to do more website stuff and clean second studio - and prime 8 small canvases bought in an absent fit from GiFi on Sat - saints encore? Had to move a bunch of paintings in the garage this  morning as Bobs car is ill and must stay there, along with Tristrams - stacked uncertainly in corner. Its clear to me that garage is returning to non-art use which means getting someone to help me take the work upstairs and stash it safely in the granary space. In the meantime the new work had better stay over by the studio to dry. Bummer, always a pleasure to get shot of it.

04 10 2020

 Got one clean studio! Looks bigger and lighter. Weird, that.

Got one other unclean however, as I piled everything from the first space into it. Will have a go at that next week. Happily thinking; culture, roots of, relevance of art. Or not.

02 10 2020

 Finished! Finished! Time to scub down studio and do some assessing.