26 10 2022

 genesis of Eve (hoho) coming on now I'm going away... 

25 10 22

 After a weekend off, mostly, spent yesterday shopping and cooking for a dinner party (v pleasant)- today feel sandbagged, which is ridiculous after max 4 glasses of blanquette. No wine, no liquors. Didnt get to studio till 11.00, tidied the eve emerging pic., then stopped to bin all the prep drawings (kept a half-doz I like)  Now realise that Im at the coast tomorrow and at Cannes the day after til early next week. Guess the rest of today is clean up.

Whatever happened to alka seltzer, do they still make it? 

22 10 2022

 Some more finished than others... phone/camera working again and I'm giving up on death.

18 10 2022

 Can't download photos as machine no longer recognises techniques after the last upgrade; just as well, as pix horrid. Flu jab this morning which has left me headachy and unstable; yes, I fell, so foot unbendable and hand puffy and sore. Bob gave me paracetamol which works. Got a bandage.  

It's such a beautiful day. Sunshine and heat. All I want to do is sit about weeping. Still working on death so not many laughs there. Feel out of it, on every level. 

The horrid pix do have a curious beauty in parts which I'm frightened of loosing, maybe thats why all this is so hard.

*Buried the chinese ink sticks - in large black pot on the balcony off my bedroom. In the middle. I'm noting this as I'm surely going to forget, as I forget everything else....

08 10 2022

 Teeth grinding day, as 5 perfectly interesting and original paintings have been prettified and rearranged to be consistent with my usual work - how did that happen, without me noticing? - and the drawings of yesterday afternoon still smell. Literally. Ground some Chinese ink sticks, pleased with density, smell disgusting; forced myself to use the stuff (ineffectually) and today they are still stinking - it's like tin and something putrefied. Overpainted in oil in the hope of something emerging and of course the smell being eradicated. Nope, to both.

???So the ink sticks came from a two-stick boxed set, painted and glitzed. Bought at vide grenier from the son of a dead artist. I sniffed them then and there was non of the fir smell that is usual with ink sticks but felt sorry for the son of the DA and bought them. Thought they were made using a new technique, maybe, the traditional one being well laborious. And time consuming. Now there's a thought - after scrapping together the fir-cone soot used to make the inks, it was buried. For years. Thats what I'II do with these things, bury them, in the hope they can be redeemed. If I can find a decent spot. 

Everything is taking too long. Everything is winding me up. Maybe I should do some long overdue housework.

06 10 2022

 

May have fiddled with the face a little before I finished this - signed and dated, it's worn me out. It's a witness statement so had to be done; pedantic, punctilious and other unattractive epithets.

Souls boats sailing along hoho. Went to the river at twilight to refresh my vision and there were pipistrelles, first I've seen for a very long time. Cheering.

05 10 22

 

trit-trotting along... weather lovely if a bit blowy for having studio windows open, health decent, not a lot else to disturb... quelle plasir

03 10 2022

 Back from Sete, where I did no work at all - rather stupidly, since boats abound there and that seems to be the base of my current theme. 

Good to change scene, see old friend Liz, get a distance on the current thinking. Yesterday was able to try some glazing on paint that has dried while I was away. Very happy that it did what I wanted.

Planning more of the same today.