...still at it, all is possible with aircon though would very much like blinds for the velux - sun beats in.
Don't like having to keep windows and shutters shut, feel too remote from the world.
But this will pass and lord help us, there may come a time when we think these days were heaven.
...Aircon good enough and the painting continues, very very bad but l like it. There's a series and when they're finished we'll see. Dream led; maybe that's why they please me so much.
Trying to find a way to make a blind to cover the skylights and failing - no way can I mount a stair ladder! - will ask for help next week though this extreme heat will be over by then, god willing.
Little deer painting has arrived in Switzerland!! Made it in one piece and the dear darling client likes it. Feel like a real painter.
ridiculous heat... and Im not posting any of the work Im doing, too shocking! Kitsch, tacky, jejune -nice I can shock myself.
There's a little aircon unit in the studio so painting fairly easy, except it isn't. I seem to be channelling my inner Picabia, from his most uninspiring time.
There's an exhibition of his work at Ceres which I can get to, via three buses and several hours. Fairly daft thing to do in the current extreme heat so that idea on hold.
Back to the old roller-coaster of delight in getting something right and total despair when it aint. If it weren't so hot I'd give it up and try some housework.
Back from Engerland... not a single exhibition did I get to, family stuff being pervasive. Nice, but no opportunity to get to Ai WeiWei in Manchester which I'd have liked, but no big deal. Nice to see the adorable tribe.
Now Bobs away and in theory I can get on with a painting or two. Managed to get the sold deer and steerer painting off to Marie-Pierre who will take it by train to Switzerland, then post it, bless her. Went to tidy the studio and found mouse droppings everywhere, god knows how they've got in. Have washed what can be washed, hope to feel more able tomorrow. Large numbers of drawings knocking about. A couple may be useful.
Been too busy to write work diary... chief culprit being maths book, the illustrations have had to be resized. This meant a. finding them and b. tracking the processes by which they were made in order to adjust them.
Honestly thought I was going mad.
In retrospect, understand that the process of making something is quite another space from real head stuff. (My painting methods are much the same, though physically easier to track I suppose.)
I work on three computers, the drawings were spread over them, in random files some inappropriatly named, on different platforms interupted by printed versions being dealt with by hand and/or sissors and returned to machine drawing. From this temporal distance it looks like chaos.
On hold now till the publishers send it back.
Managed to pack the little painting to go to Switzerland, a masterpiece in itself - Mike cut the cardboard box from Erica, Dominique helped the internal packaging, I gaffertaped it to point where I've no idea how it might be opened. Going via Marie Pierre to whom it must be delivered soon... the stuff of art, ha. A friend has just had his first exhibition (lifelong artist, too busy teaching or other work) and was amazed at the practicalities, transport, hanging, publicity and the rest. Paintings don't grow on walls, it seems, hoho.
Went life drawing last night - seem to have relinquished all control, waiting as ever for a new direction. Cant find the landscapes I did sometime, but ditto.
Life drawing slightly weird in that there were a lot of people there, almost all french - and my old mate Jean-Noel, whose brother I exhibited with in London long before moving here, and meeting the family :)
Lovely to see him, older but still kicking. The work that the French produce is sooooo slick!! Anigone eat your heart out. I scampered off before anyone could see what I was doing (they do that thing where they put their drawings on the platform and wait for people to say how good they are.)
Cybernetic stuff, Staffords Feschgrift, to sort and health stuff looming. Stuff, stuff.
Not being entirely idle. Drawing in the hills (dire), life drawing (awful, scared and rendered unhappy by model) (tattooed and v rude about the English, possibly not realising that they spoke French)(or more likely, did know)
Heard that the window I've been cleaning the study out for is unlikely to be installed due to illness of builder, who recommends replacing bookshelves and books, sigh.
Off to draw at the lake today. And life drawing tonight if back in time.
Hurrah and hurray, the Stafford book is off and given to Desktop publishing for their approval!
What could possibly go wrong?
Playing host to three cyberneticians, great fun if chaotic - the filmakers and recorderers of my dads 100 years. Now Bobs family are here, sweet folk who are used to me bunking off - which is what I've done, to get to grips with the last of the maths book.
Had a life drawing session on Saturday evening which was grim but I came away cheery enough, just nice to wield a pencil. Totally unnoteworthy otherwise. (though Karim was modelling, her first go - she was v good)
Otherwise, domestic stuff interferes as ever. Bank appointment later. Hospital scan tomorrow. Stafford book with designer, goodoh. So all OK really, just no studio work. Given the huge Asian hornet that has moved in there, I'm not too distressed.
Woke up realising that the scanning thang has to go on the back boiler... people coming and still preparing for builders. So putting stuff away and forgetting it, pro tem.
Led by a dream, I began scanning my press cuttings, contacts and so forth - from my CV file - as a start in assessing my career. I have 4 volumes of this stuff, all grimy achieved by dogged etc etc and now irrelevant. Got up to 1990.
Either I used to photograph well or I was a very pretty girl!! I had no idea. Or perhaps in the culture of the time, I wasn't right - like so much else.
Got two days before Bob gets back, though today is taken. One day then... well, l can finish up between times.
...so, done lots but non art. Moving furniture and books in the study where a window is going to be positioned shorty; and done my back in. Accordingly, started work on taxes; rendered fairly straightforward due to lack of income :) Surprisingly large royalties though.
Think the book illustrations are done - sent off a bundle, have to wait for comments and (hopefully) approval now.
Next trick is taxes. Family go tomorrow, if I can find and adapt last years taxes then I'm free to hit the easel on Monday.
Though I might take a day out somewhere. Would like to test energy after stent fitting but new drug regime something of a hurdle; made it to the riverbank today, exhausted! Guessing it takes time.
Considering that in 5 years and 3 months I will be 80, there's not that much left...
Got seven - seven!!- drawings done yesterday, by simply refusing to do anything else. Marvellous. Life goes easily on without my fussing.
Got the dentist this morning but plan a couple more before I must go. Maybe work this afternoon too .
Got six drawings off yesterday, despite an excess of chronofarge (new fave word, distress caused by computer bollix) Ronan, excellent local fixer, rebuilt one computer by hard drive and firefox, and we were forced to buy a new printer since the one that broke under guarantee has to go somewhere to be tested. I'm working now, having passed 2 deadlines.
And guests arrive! Lucky I'm so well.
Back from hospital, alive and actually well. Though battered and bruised... all that will clear up. Rather a sad time, I was in a room alone so no interesting people to talk to. And my nurse, sweetheart in many ways, took the piss out of my accent. Plus as usual (it seems) problems with paperwork and taxis.
Felt the difference immediately, it was like a knot undoing in my chest. though this is probably a fantasy. I do feel very fit - though washed over with fits of sleepiness.
Wrote a review of Hughs book which needs deciphering from my notebook and typing up... pleased to have accomplished something.
Another in the Hommage a Kitaj series, charting the decline and fall... back to the hospital on Weds., not looking forward to it. But I'm assured by well-meaning friends that the acute burning wont be so intense since the abscess on the sinus has gone.
Finished the Irene singing a Healing Song to a Flamingo so if I survive there's only the Ascent of the Blessed to come back too. Got another months' extension on the maths book!! Which l really must get on with ASAP -
Curious that the hands in both pictures are in the same position, nearly
Still lingering. Did the hospital - working on a pic of that - mouth/tooth infection so they couldn't fit the stents. Battered and bruised. Not happy in general. But today managed to waylay my dentist and get an appointment for Thursday so maybe this can get sorted.
Matts gone and I'm bereft.
Should start on book, deadline looming, but want to finish a couple of pix and focusing is hard, I'm tiered. One artery has 50%effacity, another has lost 75%. That explains the constant knackerness then.
Off for a kip...
And the rest. My dossier is vast, in French and needs all sorts of responses. And shaving, for gods sake. Will have to sit and draft a timetable today.
Bob off to the UK on Tuesday where he's seeing many of his specialists and we discover our future. Neither of us wants to return to the UK but its not impossible that he'll have to.
On the plus side, my lovely brother Matt is arriving on Monday to look after me!!!
The deadline for the math book drawings is three weeks away so hoping all this will go easily. It will, of course... and maybe I can sneak in a few hours and finish Irene Singing.
Been knocked rather more than slightly by the surprising news that I need stents around my heart. The silence of the surgeon I had misinterpreted - but clearly there's no urgency since the issues were photographed in December. Awaiting dates now.
It's all very normal, it seems. Seems deeply unnormal to me, but hey -
Despite lack of documentation, pressing happily on.... ascent of the blessed, Irene singing healing song to a flamingo, a small lamb. Liking painting.
Also finished little book, 50 sayings and sources from Stafford.
Energy seems rather good despite a. hip b. shoulder c. ankles.
* Bob ill, Zoe turned up -
Started another pic and flummoxed already. Notable fear of finishing something assuaged by having something interesting to move onto to but spending studio time staring at inept sketches... still, Bob back today so unlikely to be doing anything for a while.
Galloping on with the Eden picture. Enjoying it far too much. Introduced the walking lions in memory of Bill Norris, seems right for an eden vision (however confused)
Started on this. In trying to recall the painting on the wall in my fathers study in Dore Road, found I had some ideas of my own...
Finished one, pleased... woke up raring for the next to find Bob seriously incapacitated. Might get a few hours in later.
Poddling on. Sundry interruptions but mostly plain sailing. Rediscovered the iridescent paints, so changes in the copying but an improvement IMHO.
and in the meantime, for a variety of reasons, was painting the expulsion from Eden. Doing a snake. And this weird shadow arrived on the ceiling!
- I seem to be back working.
The drawings for Maths book have to wait for lead author to recover from eye op before I find out next stage. (=more, less, appropriate?)
The three pictures in process are trucking on...
Def cheering up. Got the Stafford thing finished and OK'd by 2 brothers, which is enough; got 10 drawings done for the maths book; started on a painting or two which are delighting me.
The painting is a pic that is sold but a friend who wanted it has agreed that a copy, along the same lines, is acceptable. It was a picture I wasn't quite ready to part with so want a copy for me and a copy for friend. No doubt problems loom but for the moment quite happy :)
Only 1,000 words to go- been writing a chapter for Staffords festschrift which is both impossibly hard and occasionally a surprising pleasure. Many anxieties.
First that springs to mind is that l am not a writer. The piece is clunky and chichi and will have to have lots of attention before it goes out. Second is that combing my memories is distressing.
And my planned book is receding; further research, extensive and deep (ha!) reveals that my approach is not that original. Who's it for? Not longer interested.
Embracing failure, wahey! V liberating.
