Geisha babe

Watched the awesome film 'Zatoichi' last night; leant to us by Ritchie, who seems to have a good eye for a movie! Loved this so much that I flipped over and bought it on Amazon so I can have it in my top favourites folder. Looking forward to some quality time drawing bits of the background with its amazing collection of wooden houses, strings of fish and stones, patterns and prints etc. Thought the costumes were great too and checked out the guy in charge - Yohji Yamamoto - should have guessed; I have loved his clothes forever. It reminds me how much I love Japanese design and that whole Zen sensibility of function and design knitting together; there is a huge Muji store in Bangkok that I cruised for ages last time we were over but I didn't buy the amazingly cool pair of shoes they had (minimal, cotton, awesome) and I regret it to this day. Looked up the website when we got back to no avail - I missed a legendary shoe purchase.

Besides the kimono patterns giving me a lifetime of inspiration for potatoes, I am also off drawing these great strings of dried fish and strings of stones; they will be appearing in a painting near me shortly both as support and main event!

The other thing that I found myself strangely drawn to do is a geisha self portrait; I have loved Cindy Sherman forever for her brilliant alter ego self portrait photos, from , I guess the eighties (found her when I was at art college which is, like soooo long ago now). I am imagining what she would have done with a sinister geisha 'film still' pic, and thinking of setting it up in my living room tomorrow. New rule of thumb with regards to my art is to just do it as so many ideas end up back-burnered due to lack of time or the right moment. Hence I have a busy few days this week as I am still obsessed with leaf ladies, have conical mountains and viking boats in my mind from Skye and now samurai references and dried fish. hum.

Stu has been polishing up a storm on some more frames for the Angel Haven show; he is really getting pretty nifty at making that lovely aged Shaker/French/Japanese (!) patina by layering and wire woolling a series of colours with far more patience than I posess. They are then waxed to within an inch of their lives with Briwax for a super sheeny finish.

Still over a month to go for the show opening so I am still kicking out angel ideas as well; just in case something appears that might take precedence over the work I have already finished; no resting on laurels here!