'One cannot speak anymore of being, one must speak only of mess.' - Samuel Beckett

Monday, May 30, 2005

Turning point.



This wall scrawl has reached a point where I'll leave it. A new painting commences on top of it, hanging over it, implied by lessons learnt from this. I've put another picture on hold to get on with it. It's only that I'm getting closer to something that I've always been close to anyway, too close to the woods and all that, something that I didn't know how to reach, not a technical issue just one of confidence I suppose, a certain perspective, something that I best not attempt to describe. As my good friend Pat mailed me yesterday 'Painting your drawings is the way forward!' and he's right. He'd said it before and others had too but you have to be patient while the horse decides.

Friday, May 20, 2005

The legacy of Leonardo and an important point about cows that may be helpful to others.



I know that this is a pretty whimsical observation but there is something of the last supper about this, however, it's late and I should go to bed. Anyway, before I go I came back from the river today and it wasn't until much later that I discovered cow shit all over my jeans and on my boots. It was something I was a little suspicious of as I cycled away from Grantchester meadows through the fading light of dusk. At this time of year the rich and bountiful thickets of grass find their way into the ceaseless churning of dual cow stomach action and out again, keeping it real. My favourite spot by the bank is now looking a little trodden and sorry and I am just so blind. I wanted to sit down and so I did. Life really is pretty simple and when there are cows about you only have to look down once before you sit. Perhaps that's why the Blackbirds were making such a racket, nah, cows don't shit in trees.

Creeping muralesness



In my studio I enjoy times of deep loitering which are ultimately well intended but cowardly exercises of avoidence and procrastination. Anyway the above is what happens when your not on the job and this is why I don't have a day job. To the right of this doodle is a canvas that wants more out of life and on whom I shall lavish promises of a more intimate collaboration.



'We're doing it for the little people'. 2004 Oil and collage on wood. 50x40cm

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Que sais-je? Ecce Homo



Resolve, dissolve. 'I've plenty of time to blow it all skyhigh, this circus where it is enough to breath to qualify for asphyxiation...' Beckett, The Unnamable.

'Having exceeded a certain point of tension, the tide stops and begins to ebb, the atmosphere becomes unclear and troubled, possibilities fade and decline into a void, the crazy grey poppies of excitement scatter into ashes.' Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles

Tuesday, May 10, 2005



Two more than four and three less than ten.
2005 148.5x148.5 Oil on canvas

A form of emotional repression.



Repressed emotions solidify and reveal themselves at the conclusive point of an ugly episode of coughing.
(See 'abstract algebraic amorphous form as anger' introducing itself to the Anger-still in aprils posting.)

Friday, May 06, 2005

Animal vanity trap



Mirrors placed tactically here and there and in conjunction with the most simple of construction will lure a multitude of vainglorious vermin and backcombing, domestic strays to entrapment cleansing fine lined modernist exteriors from the flux of scurrying mammalian anarchy.

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Of Monkeys and Men. 1



'The man who has been stabbed stabs back with his finger and with the artificial finger he has learned to make.'
- Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power.

Of Monkeys and Men. 2



'But, in the last resort, it is always the hands that matter. Their faculty of independent life has had tremendous consequences. In more than one respect, mans hands have become his destiny.'
- Elias Caneti, Crowds and Power.

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

From the stars and back again.



One more than one, one less than three.