Chrysanthemum sky

Started the day with the song 'Ape man' stuck in my head thanks to Stu's Planet Rock habit; marginally better than the day I spent with Little Donkey on loop. Now, I am not in the habit of telling the porky peas on my blog, but a little frugality with the truth may be necessary in the weeks to come; suffice to say that developments are occurring in our tiny minds with a view to our continued creative development and lifestyle in the new year. While nothing is concrete we are working ourselves towards a new future and looking to learn the needed skills to fill the gaps in our repertoire.

Exciting times for the residents of the Bateau-Lavoir and testing ones too; a spring is in the step and a bright golden haze on the meadow. With this in mind I was much amused by the horoscope proposed by my crap magazine today: 'Ignore those suggesting that you're meant to remain where you are rather than hurl yourself into some new kind of venture. The sun's tie-up with Pluto is making you restless and causing you to question recent developments that have left you feeling powerless. All that's about to change, and only you can do anything about it.'

I do hate a feeling of powerlessness of an afternoon; quite right that I should get the heels on and start marching...

Chum and I were debating a Japanese pop artist who we had both forgotten the name of; lo and behold if the same crap mag didn't also provide the answer to this conundrum as well; Takashi Murakami is the man in question and I must look him up as I have been touching on the area of Far Eastern kitchy pop in my last picture. It started out being more about Sweden, but an element of Hong Kong has crept into the final piece when I decided to go with a chrysanthemum sky; I had been toying with using flowers as clouds before but it was only when I cut the potatoes that I realised they reminded me of the greetings cards I bought in HK on our trip there years ago. Bangkok has also provided me with a fine array of kitch poppy art material over the years but in Hong Kong I found the source of all things fluffy, pink and sparkly. As the spiritual home of Hello Kitty it has no competitor in my experience for an explosion of accessories, toys, backpacks, hair ornaments... you can imagine. One of my most prized possesions, literally, is a wind-up toy plastic panda in its little box that I bought in a supermarket over there for pennies; for some reason it just really does it for me.

Had a comic moment last night introducing Stu to the concept of the porn star name; an established convention where the name of your first pet and your mother's maiden name are juxtaposed to create your unique porn star name. I, for example am 'Smokey Tallis' (love it); Stu comes out as the glorious and definately spangly cowboy themed 'Hammy Danne'.

Spent last night working out the nitty gritty for the Angels show; how many pictures, what framing I need to look at, sizes and ideas for the last few pieces. Looks like I will have 14 main images and a wee bunch of six smaller ones, all framed, and then as many postcard sized pictures in biro, watercolour, crayon, collage etc. as I can produce in the final weeks. Feeling happy and confident in what I have produced so far which is a minor miracle in itself, and still some of my favourite ideas left to go. Today I embark on a pair to the painting 'Over the roof' which was the first to suggest the relationship of angels over the roof of the world; this one sees our Swedish rock angel making the journey astride a big blue elephant. Can't wait to get started, so I shan't.