Pushing an Elephant up the Stairs

Rainy Day in Town

Oils Approx 12" x 10"

As you can see, I am still obsessed with working with a limited palette and with developing a language of familiar marks. Although I have several ideas for subject matter buzzing around in my head, I have decided that my self given summer project is going to be do with exploration of media, particularly paint.

I am still so new to painting, I have a lot to learn, particularly about oil paints.  There is not really much emphasis on the practicalities of painting at university, so this is a good opportunity to learn as much as I can by myself. 

My competence and confidence with beads come from much practice and long familiarity.  I would like to gain something of that in my paintings.

Tags: painting, oils, oil painting, art, learning

I have read so many blog entries about moving house, recently, that I thought I would share Thirteen Things about the House of My Dreams...

1. My house is close to the sea. Within easy walking distance, so that I can walk along the shore any time I want to. I can watch the sun rise or the sun set, play footsie with the tide, build sand castles or just sit with my eyes closed, taking in the salty air, and day dream.
2. The dining room has patio doors that flood the room with light.  All I have to do is push the table out of the way and I have my favourite place. My studio.
3. The patio doors lead out onto a small courtyard. White walls softened by climbing plants give me my privacy and are high enough to keep the cats in.
4. There is a small, round, heavy table and a chair where I can eat my breakfast.
5. Flowers tumble from pots and baskets drenching the air with perfume in the summer and providing evergreen symbols of life in the winter.
6. I can hear the sounds of flowing water.
7. The lounge is compact, but large enough for everyone when all the children are here.
8. There is a large, squishy armchair that the cats and I can curl up in to watch television or listen to music.
9. The house has room for enough bookcases to take all my books.
10. My bedroom is not overlooked, so I can leave the curtains open during the summer and allow the sun to wake me up.
11. I can't afford to run a car, so there must be shops close by.
12. All the rooms have large windows and wide sills so that the cats can sunbathe and watch the world go by.
13. Somewhere there is a window seat, stacked with cushions.  The perfect place to read or sketch or just to think.

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Whats not on the syllabus

To set one's self high standards is a good thing. An artist of any kind,  needs to develop a critical eye for their own work.  To be able to appraise, judge and select the successful from the less so. Not an easy task, when criticism of your work, by others or by yourself can so easily be felt personally.  It is essential to develop a degree of objectivity. The work and the artist are not the same creature, even though it may feel as though they were.

I try not to allow anyone to see my work when it is newly completed.  I need at least a day or two to get through the 'honeymoon' period.  The time when I am enchanted, delighted and involved. I keep my new baby close and observe it  from every angle.  Slowly, I begin to notice its faults. I may attempt to correct them or brood over  how fundamental and intractable they are.  Within hours the love affair is over and the art work I was so proud of becomes something so dreadful I cannot bear to look at it.

This is the point at which much of my work has come to grief. Paintings cut into pieces with shiny, sharp scissors, beadwork dismantled and scattered.  Drawings, torn and shredded.  One of the most difficult lessons I have had to learn during my two years at college and university is to resist the temptation to destroy. Tutors insist on seeing all your work, the good and the bad.  Judging a project as a whole, from beginning to end, not just the final destination. 

So I began to hide my work from myself. To put it out of sight and easy reach once the voice of my inner critic began to make itself heard.  The result was detachment.  An ability to see things in a more objective way.  Suddenly I could say 'that works' or 'that doesn't' in a way far less clouded by emotion than previously.  Strangely, some of what I consider my more successful pieces seemed no longer to have anything to do with me.  It is difficult to imagine that I  made or painted them. They have become something separate, self-contained.

During the last semester I made my most important discovery so far. Not everything has to work. Just because 4, 8, or even 9 out of 10 pieces are failures does not mean that I am not an artist, or that I never can be.  It is the one successful work that matters, even if it is only one in a hundred. There is no success without failure. 

The painting pictured above is one that once would have met its fate at the hands of a pair of scissors, and deservedly so as it is not very good!  However, instead of being destroyed it will be filed with my notebooks and sketches. Looked at for what it can teach me about what doesn't work. Enjoyed for the beauty of that deep, dark red and perhaps one day become a step along the way to something that will work.

Speed Surfing...

Surfing is the ideal activity for a can't sleep, can't focus, attention of a gnat kind of day.  My list of favourites has grown so large since Saturday night that it will probably take me until the next century to sort out, blog about and generally make use of them.  And that doesn't include the time I will need to update my blogroll!

This,  I just had to share right now. Software that creates an interactive, 3D, art gallery. I have downloaded the preview version and it has kept me happily playing for hours. There are some wonderful sample galleries on the site that are well worth a visit if you enjoy looking at artworks. I really like Kevin Sharkey's paintings and Moshe Cain's series of photographs 'Tame Land - Britiain's Domesticated Landscape' is well worth a some of your time.

CanDo Interactive Gallery has definately made it into my top 10 'I want that!' list.

Tags: software, artists, gallery, CanDo, Kevin Sharkey, Moshe Cain, Interactive

The colour of days...

Thoughts are physical things.  Each has its own shape and weight and texture.  They colour the day.  Filter perceptions, cast shadows or dazzle according to their nature.  Some days are like popping candy.  Citrus sharp thoughts that sting and stimulate. Orange and lemon and bright, bright green.  Concentration crumbles under the joyful, dizzy onslaught.  No time to hold on to a thought before it fragments, scatters, gets lost in something else. These are happy days.  Productive days.  Quick laughter and flaring temper days. Days of hidden dangers.

Then there are the cotton wool days. Filled with colourless, weightless thoughts that float and stick and suffocate.  You can drown in the fog of nothingness.  Loose oneself in hours, days, even weeks. Camouflaged, absorbed, dragged down until you become lost in the dark.  Invisible. Helpless. Without resistance.

The ball bearing days are the worst. Black and red and ice white thoughts thunder.  Pour.  Fling themselves.  Hundreds and thousands the size of your fist from every direction.  As creative as the popping candy days but dark, intense, unbearable.  They bruise, smash, destroy. Unless you find a way to escape, to hide from the torrent.

They know no boundaries, these thoughts. No master. They can squeeze themselves, popping candy, cotton wool and ball bearing, into one small span of twenty four hours. Or take turns over weeks, or months or even years.  Cotton wool days are the punctuation marks.  The pauses between drowning in the dark  and flying amongst rainbows. 

What colour will tomorrow's thoughts be?

Coming up for air...

It seems that I will be keeping a roof over my head after all. The 'Notice Seeking Possession' should be withdrawn and my landlord will be happy once more (for the back story see here). Late this afternoon I finally received the promised call from a woman at the council offices. The case has finally been signed off, my benefits have been reinstated and the rent arrears will be made good as soon as possible.  After investigation the fraud officer has discovered that I have been overpaid by a total amount of exactly...zero.

Yes, that's right. Zero. Nothing. Not even a pound or a penny.  I have been read my rights, terrified and put through hell for claiming the correct amount of money.  I wonder how much this has all actually cost the tax payer? A home visit of several hours, paperwork, reports, telephone calls, letters, all these weeks of 'investigation'.

I understand that the council has a duty to prevent benefit fraud. I understand that when there is something suspicious it must be investigated.  I'm not convinced that my experience demonstrates an efficient way of going about it.  It would be interesting to see a comparison of how much is spent on such cases against how much money is recovered/saved.  I suspect that an awful lot of time is wasted investigating people who have made errors on application forms etc. 

The bureaucracy of it makes no sense to me.  The amount of housing benefit someone like me is entitled to is a matter of a fairly simple calculation.  My student advisor checked the amount when I first applied and again when this all started.  She said I was receiving the correct amount.  It took her a few minutes, it has taken the fraud investigation officer since the end of April to come to the same conclusion.                                          

The kindness of strangers...

There have been several news items lately about the Reader's Digest article 'Uncommon Courtesy'.  Lots of cross grumbling from those cities that did badly in the league of good manners and a certain smug delight from those who did better. I have no intention of revuing the article or going over the results. Many people have already made a better job of that task than I could. Instead, I thought I would share an incident that shows both the best and the worst of the traveling public.

Early last year I went to London to visit Tate Modern. By the time I finally boarded a train to return home, I was exhausted and in substantial pain.  My back problem makes both standing and walking for any length of time difficult, gallery visits somewhat frustrating.  There is only a limited amount I can manage to see in one trip. 

I was looking forward to the journey home, it was an opportunity to rest and recuperate as long as I did not sit in one place for too long, which can also be problematic.  Unfortunately, it soon became obvious that getting home was not going to be as straight forward as it should have been.  Two or three hours after boarding the train we had only managed to travel a few miles. The rail company, unable to solve an  electrical problem with the line, announced that all passengers would have to leave the train and continue their journeys by road. Coaches would be supplied as soon as possible.

In the best British tradition of queuing, we formed an orderly line just outside a very cold railway station and waited. And waited. And waited. By the time the promised coaches arrived, I was beginning to wonder if I would be able to walk the short distance to board.  Leaning heavily on my stick, I took a tentative step forward, the queue dissolved, and I found myself swept up in a crush of people all determined to be  first to get on the bus.

With a growing feeling of both anger and desperation, I struggled to stay on my feet. Pain made tears sting my eyes and quite frankly I felt frightened as I was buffeted about by single minded strangers. I was almost there when another push from someone toppled me over and I fell heavily. That was when the unbelievable happened. The crowd kept coming. All I could see were feet and suitcases as people stepped over and on me. I was really crying now, although as much from anger and shock as anything else.

Suddenly a young woman shouted that someone had fainted and bent over me. I remember saying indignantly that I not fainted! She kept shouting at the driver until finally he made the crowd stop and take a step back as she helped me to my feet, took my bag and helped me onto the coach.

When I think about that experience, I remember that young woman. Her kindness and the way she chatted cheerfully with me for the rest of the journey.  I wish I could say thank you.

Sadly, the experience has placed further restrictions on my life. I have not visited London again by train and feel reluctant to do so.  In the best of circumstances I find crowds difficult to cope with, railway staff have proved themselves far from helpful, and the incident could have been so much worse without the kindness of a stranger.

Tags: trains, travelling, strangers, kindness, manners, courtesy, disabled, disability

Lazing on a Sunday afternoon...

Daughter #2 and Merlin

That wasn't what I meant at all...

Some people think that I lack a sense of humour. The reason they think so is because I frequently don't 'get' jokes and in general I do not like situation type comedies. The first of these may indeed indicate that there is something missing from my 'funny bone', the second is more to do with an irritating extra rather than a lack.

I too easily empathise with characters in TV shows and films.  It isn't that I do not see the comedy, its that I  experience the embarrassment  a real  person might feel in that particular situation.  As the amusement quota builds, I squirm, cringe inwardly and frequently feel my face flush as though it were happening to me. Occasionally I can become so mortified by these imaginary events that I have to change channels or even leave the room. My response is a source of endless amusement to those who know me.

Satire, wit, clever dialogue, shows that don't take themselves too seriously and allow their characters to speak with tongue firmly in cheek at times, those are the things that make me giggle. I also have a childish love of silly place names and  looking at the way words, phrases, sentences that have slipped so far into our every day lives can seem comical when seen with fresh eyes...

Convenience Store...huh? as apposed to an inconvenient one?

Family Butcher  and the more contemporary Family Kebab House conjure all sorts of images...

High Class Butchers - so who shops in low class establishments?

...and so on and so on.

My playing with words has, however, got me into trouble. A very long time ago, someone told me that I could be anything I wanted to be.  Immediately seeing the traps hiding in that sentence, I began to explore. Anything I wanted to be? An artist? Yes. Successful? Yes.  Skinny? Yes.  Some things might be more difficult to achieve than others, but, yes anything was possible.

A virgin?

Um...with three kids? Errr...

You did say 'anything'...

So I had decided.  From that day on I would be a virgin! The trouble is that the universe, karma, God/dess, fate, whatever, also has a sense of humour. It replied with 'celibacy'.

That was not what I meant. No. Not what I meant at all!

 

Tags: humour, comedy, celibacy, virginity

Re-invention...

People do it every day. Television programmes document the missing, the stories of real people and of fiction.  Some times I wonder what it would be like. To arrive some where new.  Unknown, with no labels or assumptions, not even a name.  A clean slate to write on what you will.  That day really would be the first day of the rest of your life. 

What must it feel like to board a train, a bus or even an aeroplane, knowing that you have no intention of returning? Frightening? Exhilerating?  Like finally putting down a burdon that has long become to heavy too bear, a relief?  Is it really possible to walk away from every thing and not drag the past with you into this shiny, imagined future?

I would like to think so. To believe that escape is possible if one has the courage.

The trouble is that the past, the present even, is not simply a weight that can be put down and left behind.  It is a spiders web.  The silken strands of a rope master that entangle, bind and trap.  A maze with no exit.  A new life merely another dead end.

There is no way out. No new beginning. No re-invention.