City of blue loons

Oh yikes, it always does that to me. Festival has descended on the city like a collective madness and it is no longer an acceptable commute across town to galleries, friends, framers etc; it is a journey to the centre of the communal creative ego. Saw a very sparkly blue person on the way in and kids running about in vintage pyjamas and realised that there was no going back - I was headed for the middle of the monster...

Having said that, driving through a culturally frenzied city full of men in kilts is preferable by many degrees to serving food to people attending said cultural events. Looooads better.

Spent a very pleasant and productive day in Leith after I navigated the mads, in fact I am reeling a little from the unexpected but welcome dose of cultural inspiration and artistic cameraderie! Intended to spend the afternoon in a little light painting in Ritchie's gallery, which I really enjoy as it always throws up new techniques, ideas and people to look at both artistic and musical. I had been working on a big one of Mme Tabere and some of her angels on a mosaic background, which took me a lot of yesterday and this morning, so decided to branch out and start a new one; a double portrait of Mme T and 'Greta' another Swedish forest angel. She is wearing a winged helmet pinched from Don Giovanni in 'Amadeus' and the idea for the double portrait came from seeing a couple of visitors taking an 'arms length' picture by the castle. Lo and behold I then watched 'Thelma and Louise', with possibly the most famous 'arms length' self portrait known to celluloid. Also noticed that Louise's scarf is tied like my Swedish forest angels' hair - so I'm now left wondering if this is another weird and wonderful subconscious inspiration.

Painted up a storm on the start of that one - I do enjoy a little company of the fellow painter variety - and also fun to watch Ritchie on a deadline to finish and photograph a painting for a catalogue by the end of the day. Talk about pressure; that would be guaranteed to send me into a knot of nerves from which no recognisable art would emerge.

And so on to the other major event of the day; Coburg Studios open day, which was on today and tomorrow. Realising that cross-city driving on the day of the Cavalcade tomorrow would be worse than stupid, I whizzed over for the last hour and a half of the day's open-ness. Fab.

I don't have the space to list the painters and makers that attracted me, so I shall confine myself to a couple who stood out for their input to my creative thoughts for the day and list the rest below!

Love-love-loved Stephanie Rew's amazing figurative studies, which I have seen somewhere and thought were stunning - so great already to meet the artist herself. She uses a lot of kimonos and patterned textiles so I am a big fan of the idea, without adding into the mix the fact that she paints in what is to me a really instinctive and non-academic way. They don't come across as studies for the sake of it, but wonderfully tactile, decorative pieces put together with a real eye for colour and composition. Then I found out that she is a mum of two and manages to put that together with creating these wonderful things; then I find out that I know her husband, who handily walks in - he is a wine merchant who supplies the restaurant I used to manage. So we had one of those "I didn't know you painted" moments. Her contribution to my store of wisdom was regarding the discipline of painting and drawing. I have noticed how much mine has improved this year and her comment was that it is amazing how much you come on once you work every day. Her quote "you have to work every day" is now added to my mantra list; I know it is true and I shall continue to push myself on this one. Who knows what I can achieve.

My other inspirational meeting was with Joanna Kessel, who is a mosaic maker (is there a word for it? 'mosaicist?') which I have always been interested in a lot. I didn't share the story, but long ago before I left London I nearly committed myself to making a conservatory floor sized mosaic with no former training or skills. Luckily I got cold feet and called off the blagging before I got in some seriously hot water. It is still something I would love to have a pop at though and I am still very drawn to 'making' as well as painting; woodwork, glasswork, mosaic, cement - bring 'em on. Her work is truly beautiful in terms of craft, colour and understanding what works well and why in terms of line, design etc. Respect.

To rattle the others I met in a list is not a show of indifference or disinterest; I am just showing off because I was so pleased to meet loads of artists on an equal footing and talk art! It helped that I had been working, so the paint covered jeans kind of did away with any mistaking my occupation and helped me avoid building up the courage to announce it. Mental note; go to open studios covered in paint to speed introductions and lessen stress.

So the others I met, in no particular order: Maria Vigers, Melanie Williamson, Rosemary Walker (interesting monoprint techniques), C P Campbell (didn't meet but loved boats and swallows), Astrid Trugg, Karen Warner, Lynn Hanley (self publishes prints, so hope I am doing the right thing by trusting someone else!), Stephen Mangan (saw his in Glasgow art fair and admired technical skills and great greens). I feel guilty for missing loads, but the late hour demanded it; I hope that serendipity threw the most useful ones in my path in terms of inspiration and future contacts. My mind is a-buzz.

Old Egg-eye

Finally managed to get around to going for my long overdue eyetest today; when I say 'overdue' I mean bigtime- last sat in an opticians when I was sixteen and studying had left me eye-strained. On that occasion I looked at some number charts on a wall and left with some very dodgy pink (if I recall correctly, but I am not precise on this) spectacles which sat forlorn in their case until I forgot about them and lost or discarded them along life's rocky road. This time the full force of technology has become available to the eye doctor, who was of course half my age. I really hate it when all the things your mother told you start to come true, especially all on one day. "You know you're old when the doctors look young." *Check* "You'll need glasses if you keep trying to work in that light (true, for some reason I have always preferred twilight for all close work)," *Check* "You'll get piles/varicose veins/cramp if you sit like that," (nothing to do with eyetest but you get the drift) *Check*.

What surprised me is how this experience turned into easily the high point of my day, and when competing with uninterrupted free time to paint and groove to music and a coffee and gossip with good and gossip-ful friend, this is no mean feat! Something in all the gadgets and tricks really had me from the start and it was hard to restrain myself from shouting "Go again, go again!" at the end of each section of discovery. Of course my eyes are very important to me as an artist, so I was drawn in by the new knowledge of their shape, capabilities and frailties; particularly enjoyed the very visual treat of seeing my retina scan like a red river delta in space. Very healthy it is too so that was a good kick off. The next section was a little hairier as I discovered that my left eye, left alone so to speak, is pretty hopeless and can't even read the little letters on the wall chart - I could actually feel it straining away to itself once it lost the aid of its stronger righty buddy. And so the astygmatism test and the somehow exciting news that my little lefty is a bit of a rugby ball shape and sees things in a bit of a 'wonky' way. Optician showed me a helpful image of two church towers, one unright - normal vision, and one wonky - astygmatismatic vision. Suddenly sure that this is the source of all crazy painting ideas, but more likely its the reason I have to really concentrate to get a straight line, should I need one. Mr Egg-eye on solo would give me a bit of a slant every time, bless.

I felt strangely protective of Lefty as I painted tonight and actually stopped while I could still see the board; unheard of - Stu frequently has to turn on the light and surprise me with the novel idea of actually being able to see what I am doing. Weird habit that, no idea why my self preservation is so weak in this department... But no more!

Now I have to wait a whole seven to ten days before I can take charge of my new two pairs of 'sexy secretary' specs. I feel the need to nurture the wee peepers now and can't wait to get specced up. Another strange thing about getting older is exposing your own home-grown urban myths; I have told all and sundry for years that my vision is 20-20, which I realise now has no basis in truth and never has had - a figment of my own mythology creation system...

Read a thing about that the other day in the Metro actually which suggests that we all harbour 'fake' memories from early years which for some reason our brains just make up. Like the friend you have (I have anyway) who believes that she could fly as a child; not dreams of flying, but actual memories; why would we do that? Ever since then I have been racking my brains to unearth interesting and fantastical fake memories buried in my brain, but to no avail. Maybe I left it too late and now my age-faded memory has gone and forgotten them, dammit!

Better scoot before Mr Egg grows weary of staring at this unnatural light. Bon nuit.

Speed the decades

Okay, I know the ageing thing happens to us all, we grow weird hair and double chins, memory becomes erratic and things hurt more than before; but there are good things too...

One of the things I love about getting a little more mature is knowing what I do and don't like; it has taken me four decades, but now I know which washing powder I hate the smell of and makes me itch (Persil -Ha!) and what juice is insipid and worthless as a breakfast pick-me-up. What I didn't realise until it happened was that for the four previous decades (or at least two of them, when choice was mine) I bought things willy nilly without any idea of preference, and somehow never managed to remember which things I had already tried and dismissed as unsatisfactory for whatever reason. The same is pretty much true of fashion for me; it has only been worryingly recently that I have realised to what degree different shapes of clothing affect the outline of my body - ie: what makes my bum look large and lumpy and what sweeps flatteringly over it. It is a shame that we have to learn these things so slowly.. or would it just have been wasted on our younger, impatient selves?

Painting has been a similar experience; I used to be bored in major galleries until I found the Modernists; all the older masters seemed like so many ruff-wearing, angst ridden figures in unnatural positions. I have a horrible feeling that had I stood before Gericault's 'Raft of the Medusa' aged 18, I would have done that 'so what?' face... I'm sure I would have actively steered clear of Goya, because it is only in my fifth decade that I have 'discovered' the wonders of many of the major works that I now long to travel the world to view. Goya is a prime example because it is actually only this week and only via the technology that is the laptop that I have become aquainted with his 'Black paintings' including the very lovely 'Saturn devouring his son' and the 'Witches Sabbath'. Now of course he is added to my list of painters to track down in 'real life' - oh no, a trip to Madrid? Think I quite fancy that somehow; he will have to join the queue though, I am still dying to see the Bruegel room in Vienna and various museums in le Sud de France.
And, and, and....


Feeling fully recovered after my close brush with the debt creating money grabbing immoral toxic waste that are the bankers yesterday; not that I'm bitter.. that is another thing to add to the amazing list of things that I learn only at a certain age - banking establishments are not our friends, no matter how many leaflets they produce stating the contrary. But I digress.
Framed up my last finished pic of the Engel Flusterer, with the double frame including the inner 'slip'. I do really love it especially as the outer frame is 'distressed' and so the effect works really well - the inner slip in white and the outer in a kind of off-creamy colour with scuff marks. Suits the painting really well. This of course presents a small dilemma as this is far more expensive than the framing I have opted for previously. Half of me wants to go with the best possible presentation for my images, half is the cynical view that, if my aim is to sell them, odds are the new owner will be none the wiser and perfectly happy with a less money consuming frame.
A compromise will be arrived at I feel sure, and probably coming down on the less cost effective side as I would hate to send my babies into the world badly dressed!
Spending Saturday afternoon painting at Ritchie's gallery which will be fun again; I like picking up little ideas from another painter - last time I came away and started painting with totally different blues, just because I borrowed a tube from him. They weren't even the colours I borrowed, but the act of moving outside my paint comfort zone freed me up to try some new combinations. Now whenever I buy paint I let Stu have a pic of a new colour to shake things up, like adding a random element to my palate. Still haven't found a use for green-gold though.

House of cards

I was asked my occupation twice today, with quite wildly differing results; the first time was at the doctor, where I replied with happy confidence, all proud of myself "I'm a painter".
Which is true.
The second time I was asked was on the phone to my bank. I replied "I'm a supermarker cashier".
This is also true.
What is very different is how the two answers made me feel and made the asker react. The doctor was interested and encouraging; the telesales bank bitch was patronising and dismissive. Oh, did I say that out loud? I hope you recorded it for training purposes.
She said, "What is your monthly income, take-home?"
I muttered an answer, already feeling patronised.
She said, "Is the joint account with your husband?"
I corrected her to 'partner', feeling her reaction sink in.
She said, "How to you hope to pay back the monthly amount; what share of the mortgage do you pay?"
I pointed out that we share a joint account and so we share the bills. They come out of the joint account and we don't do sums like that.
She said, "Shall I put 50% then?"
I said "No, you could put down what I said if you like."
She said nothing but I felt the condescention in waves down the wire.
I resisted the urge to hang up, realising that she would call back and make me feel even smaller.
I said "Listen, I'm really not interested in paying back twice the amount I borrowed over seven years, lets just forget it shall we?"
She said "I'll just put that it was declined then."
I said "No... lets do that truth thing again."
Me, being naive and a little romantic about the world, had always kind of believed that actually my bank was kind of nice and wanted to help me out with my money issues and resolve my debts in a friendly and practical way best for me. Don't you just hate that 'opening of the eyes' thing; the removal of comfortable ignorance and replacement with bare, boney old truths...
Nine months to build the confidence and exuberance to get out there, do this, walk into galleries and show them my work; five minutes to a call centre and I'm feeling just about ready to throw in the towel; down came the titular card house I had so laboriously built.

Luckily, us girls have some defence systems tried and tested over generations; honed to perfection by a thousand patronised and dismissed souls. First; we play a little music - I chose Alanis Morisette's apt composition 'Joining you' in which she sings to her friend's suicidal daughter:
'If we were our incomes, if we were our obsessions, if we were our afflictions....
If we were our bodies, if we were our futures, if we were our defences I'd be joining you.'
Followed it up with a light burst of Flashdance, a touch of Fame and a soul warming dose of the very lovely Joan Armatrading.
Then... I watched Thelma and Louise.
Right as rain now.

Building blocks

Here's a cheery haiku that popped into my head a few weeks ago;

Put on your best smile -

Reasons for your existence

Are diminishing

But this is all about reasons for blogging; reasons for me being here at all, talking a bunch of bananas to an imaginary multitude about whatever creeps into my head in the morning, evening or noon-tide. I was going to cut a long story short, but there are many strands to the story and many answers, some ongoing. So, without compromising the Great Unfinished Novel (which is actually one of the reasons).... I am blogging because...

1) I watched the film 'Julie and Julia' on the flight over to Vietnam last November and was inspired by the dedication of Julie Powell in her aim to cook and blog her way every day through Julia Child's cookbook. The key words for me were 'every day' - the masochist in me loves to take on a challenge like that which demands structure and discipline; having just done the year on Arran, which was very big on this, I was up for a new form of stick to beat myself with.

2) Writing is something I love and I have always had sitting at my elbow as second or third favourite creative pursuit after, probably, painting and photography. The 'Great Unfinished Novel' I refer to (courtesy of Lloyd Cole's song lyric 'I was working then on my great unfinished novel. Please let me introduce myself, my name is Ronald'), is that ellusive mixture of autobiography and fiction which, despite the fact that a zillion people are in the queue in front of me shouting 'ME! ME!', I still want to have a shot at a)writing and b) publishing. I have started the writing bit, but the lack of discipline always gets in the way; hence this exercise in structuring my day to fit in a chunk of writing. The idea is that at the end of my year's blog I will seamlessly move on to the G.U.N.

3) I wanted to record for myself the process of this year so that it would gain weight in its significance. It adds much more gravitas to your efforts to 'emerge' as an artist if you are recording the whole thing for the world at large. The blog post 'couldn't be bothered today' cannot exist.

4) A thought popped into my head one day while pondering my output as an artist which went;

'What, and how much would I produce, and how would I market it if my life depended on it?'

'Oh, it does.'

It was that simple; sometimes the greatest truths hit us in the weirdest ways. The choice was simple -get your ass in gear and emerge as a painter or sit there in years to come muttering 'I could have been a contender...' It's not a rehearsal, yadda, yadda, yadda.

5) The seed of self belief was there, and the approach was easy, all I had to do was follow the pattern that was already in my head - the necessity was for the way to do that. The way to do that was to tell a zillion people what I did today. Every day.

6) A very good friend has told people repeatedly in my presence that the reason she gave up painting is that she knew I would make it. So, like, I have to!

The trillion dollar questions are 'When will I know I have made it?', 'What does this mean - 'made it'?' The long answer is to do with money, alas, and involves being able to live off the proceeds of my art; preferably to support the both of us as well. The other answer is more ellusive but more important at the end of the day. Every time I have an achievement I am deliriously excited until the moment fades and I look for the next 'high'. Every little step up this year has been exciting, but I have in mind the 'made it' moment as my first solo show in one of the galleries on Dundas Street. This may be over optimistic, but I think the best way to get a long way up is to aim high; and, to be honest, I think amazing things are possible with self belief.

I would never have dreamed that I could get as far down the road as I have in the time since leaving Arran, but I have.

A quote from a friend on Facebook; 'I am on a journey to collect the bricks to build my life.'

Fast waters

Woh, sorry! That was all a bit heavy-heavy monster sound yesterday... but then you should have seen the mess I was in the day my cat died, on my fortieth birthday. It was not a good time and I sure as hell didn't know what to say then, either.

Mads, our lovely fat rescue cat, has cystitis at the moment, so we are suffering a cat anxiety week again now. Tonight she seems happier and demanded cuddles by standing on the kitchen table and shouting at me until I obliged. Once you have lost one animal it does make you wary though, especially in the light of the doggie bereavement of my pal, and I am making sure that there is not something more sinister going on in her little furry body. When I say 'I am making sure...' this is obviously not true as there is no way of doing this, but I am alert to her moods and toilet habits. More alert; I am already a little too familiar with the litter tray deposits because I am a saddo.

Had a great nature walk into cash-work this morning; my Monday's are always an early start at the moment so I can walk in along the valley by the burn. Today was unpromisingly dull and drizzley, but I went for it anyway, woolly hat in place and was rewarded by a particularly good array of wildlife. Probably helped that no other loons were out and about at 7.30am on a rainy morning, but I met a dipper doing what they do best right outside my back door (virtually) and then another at the far end of the valley. I love dippers, they do just what it says on the tin, although an alternative name would have been 'bobbers' as they do that very well too. The burn was very high and fast because of the onset of the Festival Rains (yearly occurence, set your calendar by it) and as I walk downstream it seems as if you keeping step with the water as it hurtles off to Leith. Apparently Mr Gormley's men in the Water of Leith have fallen in, which is a shame, and not a great vote of confidence for whoever installed them. If they have weed like 'up our way' it could actually look quite cool as our stretch of the burn is festooned with white blossomed mermaid's hair that would be perfect for Ophelia. It reminds me of that painting of her anyway by...dot, dot, dot, forgotten. Oh well, I'm sure you know the one I mean.

There were also a fine array of snails and slugs out to play including a vast number of albino (?) cream slugs, which were especially hard not to step on due to their unusual colour, which fooled my slug periferal vision radar. Still managed not to squish any though.

A willow warbler was also out doing absolutely exactly what it should have been; warbling on a willow. I have to confess that it could have been any old warbler, but its location has me convinced; it was just too good. No dog walkers today, must be sitting behind the curtains hoping the weather would pass. Pathetic. I have seen depressingly few people in the valley this summer apart from on the couple of blatantly tropical days earlier in the spring when the bacchanalia was taking place all over the green spaces of the city. Since then people, children, picnics... all no show. Have the horrific feeling that they are stuck indoors watching crap TV and eating crisps...

Finished the painting I started the other day; a throwback to another one I did a couple of years ago on monumental women dancing in a wooded glade that stemmed from a dream. This one has the advantage of potato print and I am now contemplating titles that encapsulate my feelings of the wooded canopy (roof, ceiling, vault) above the figure in her 'caryatid' pose. Off to check out some of my favourites in French to see if they sound better in another language, or suggest other ideas. I love doing the word bit of the painting almost as much as the painting itself. Somehow it 'ties it down' in my mind and gives it a completeness I can never feel if left untitled. It is like not naming children..

A Sadness unspoken

Language is a slippery little sucker. We rely on it so much to communicate between our loved ones, colleagues, total strangers and idolise those who can manipulate it into poetry and song. So what happens when we are in need of a kind word of solace to a grieving friend? Words, literallly, fail us. Faced with the situation numerous times in my life I have yet to find the answer to what, surely, must have been thought out by a few of the valued thinkers of our times; what to say to the bereaved. Sympathy cards are united in their lack of originality and feeling; 'thinking of you' or 'with sympathy' just about covers the whole spectrum, alongside a floral design in muted colours. Poetry can come close to encapsulating the heave of emotion we feel for ourselves or another in the throes of grief; Auden's little number, now forever connected to 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' for me, is a true outline of loss, but a little lenghty for anything other than a formal eulogy. My family has always leaned towards Dylan Thomas's 'Rage, rage against the dying of the light'; the anger of the recently bereaved finding fuel in the hostile words; fighting against the inevitable.

And inevitable it is, sadly. Maybe that is why it is so hard to express when the feeling is so huge, but the event itself so commonplace - it will happen to us all repeatedly in the form of bereavement before we take our own turn. I read a good bit of the Tibetan book of Living and Dying, which made a great deal of sense at the time although some of the ritual aspects come across as pretty far out in our Western society. It does at least come from the standpoint of the inevitability and unavoidable nature of the beast; once this is accepted, maybe the words come easier, or are not necessary.

I think our language does fail us on this one, and fail us totally. We are better to express our co-feeling with actions and thoughts than clumsy sentences.

The power of the image can be painfully strong at such times; I declined to see the photo of my recently-ex boyfriend's sister's still born baby because I knew the image would burn in my mind and take on associations far beyond the simple fact of its existence. Tangled in guilt and complicated emotion, that picture would haunt me today had I let it - I am glad I let that one alone. So the picture of a lost person or animal can cause the grief to burn brighter; the two dimensional image mocking the lack of a physical presence and serving as a reminder of the still open wound. I am not convinced that it is healthy, for me at least, to surround myself in photos of the departed. I remember them well and gently without an image to burn into the backs of my eyes.

A friend lost her dog today and I was amazed at how, yet again, I was struck dumb in the moment of need. Words of support, of comfort - what could these be? What leaves me strenghtened by the experience is the knowledge that, without words, she understood that I understood the immensity and hopelessness of her feeling, and shared in her pain. That seems important to me.