Icy stares

I keep meaning to leave the crazy wintry conditions alone but it impinges on my life so much at the moment that I can't help myself. For starters, it has awoken the demon in me that thinks it is acceptable to eat half a Soreen malt loaf in one sitting if one has the excuse of harsh walking conditions. Secondly, I am annoyed with our little Siberian season for distracting so many people from the gainful occupation of gallery shopping, thus probably depriving me of sales and publicity in the crucial pre-Christmas period. Stop looking at the snow! Get over it and go into nice warm galleries!! YOu NEED my paintings for your loved ones this Festive season.

That felt better. Pointless, but better.

I have taken to standing and having a bit of a stare at the burn (small river) out the back of the house; the hills beyond and the sky above that. Tonight Venus was shining away insanely brightly and the whole area was darker due to the clear sky; weird how the cloud is both warming and lighting - without it the air is almost painfully cold tonight and the city much darker. 'The woods are very dark and deep and we have miles to go before we sleep...'

Meant to comment yesterday when I was rambling about the lovely ivy-clad poplars; it is now that I need a proper medium-format or plate camera to set up in the wilds and just open the shutter for a few minutes at night; I just know that the digitals, for all their cleverness, couldn't capture the light like the old boys. The light is so fragile and delicate, the hues so subtle and shifting. I do miss the 'old' ways of photography as I first learned it; developing myself and enlarging in the bathroom cupboard, messing with exposures, photocopying negatives and printing obsessively over and over until I had the image I was hunting... Don't get me wrong, I'm loving digital for a whole raft of reasons too but I loved the craft and the dirty-handedness of black and white.

Day off from any form of money-making activity tomorrow so am intending to turn my sights to considering the next year and the potential creation of our own business; it is daunting but mind numbingly exciting at the same time. I have a huge big fat pile of ideas and notes but I have also got to look at all the practical stuff, which is my job now. Without the boring bit out the way I will never get to play...the time is now - the weather is on my side to hole up and bury my head, so lets get the show on the road. What to call it is my other dilemma; I had a name in my head for months which is now ringing doubts; back to the drawing board or go with the instinct? It came to me in a dream and that is nearly always good enough reason for me to do anything..

Oh, and a tree stole my hat this morning; pacing along minding my own business and watching my icy footfalls and 'whoosh'!! Hat suddenly ten feet back down the pavement... a wily twig had hooked and twanged it away from me in an instant of devilishness!

You need to watch those trees....

Silently moves the fog

Aha; a new element has arrived to join the snow. Fog. If it was still and contemplative walking home along the burn before, it was stiller and more contemplative tonight... there is nothing like forgetting you are in a city when you are in a... city.

There are two marvellous trees at the end of the park; poplars with ivy coats, which have looked amazing every day in the snow and tonight they were at their eerie finest looming out of the murky dark. I say 'dark' but that has been one of the wonderful things about the snow; when combined with the streetlights the park adopts an other-worldly orange glow and it is light enough to see your way despite being unlit directly. The creak of my feet was tonight joined by the slow and gentle drip as the thaw set in; long may it last. Despite the beauty and the amazing light effects I am getting to see every morning and night, it would be good to know that my car can function once more and I can move further than a couple of miles away from my house...

There is undoubtedly something calming and settling about adopting a rhythm based on walking however, which reminds me of last spring when I got in the habit of walking every day, and on Arran last year when needs meant much more communing with nature. Mental note; walking is a definate aid to the removal of anxiety and encourages contemplation in place of stress. Also means less guilt about eating things made with sugar.

About to attempt the wrapping and organisation of Christmas gifts; only one to go really which is for a random relative's child who I have never met. Not at all sure why I bother, but know that it would cause raised eyebrows and tutting from the older generation if I stopped, so I continue. I do wonder how long this will be expected, however; not sure if my imagination (or tolerance) can stretch to buying gifts for unknown teenagers...

So, cards and paintings all round, and I hope not too many disappointed faces on Christmas day upon discovering the lack of dodgy perfumed products or M&S fleece gloves.

Outside the fog continues to move silently past the street lights.

All those Sunday songs

Having copped out of working/painting in the gallery today due to my lack of tax/MOT/insurance, which itself is due to the 'extreme weather conditions', I decided to have a proper Sunday. For this I prepared myself with tea, warm clothing, cat and newspaper and settled upon the sofa to recline, relax and read. Cats are obviously genetically programmed for Sundays and Twig had probably spent months wondering why I wasn't conforming to her expectations of human behaviour. She took up residence on my stomach, preventing any movement, including tea drinking and newspaper reading; when I decanted to the table, she arrived and laid herself out on the paper in a manner appropriate for covering the most possible print area. Team point Twig; latest cat behaviour exam passed with flying colours.

She managed to wake me with her mad yowling this morning, of course, so all attempts at a lie-in were thwarted. The yowling seems to mean either 'Mum! Dad is trapped in that room and I can hear running water!! Help me save him!' or 'Dad!! Don't go in there! Don't leave me here with her and that fat black-and-white creature! Help!!'

Haven't figured out which; for some reason she only performs this ritual when Stu is showering, obvioulsy unphased by my removal to the land of the running water...

I did get some work done as well, I am proud to report; just when I thought I was all 'angelled-out' I realised that the need for Christmas presents was upon me and so I took once more to the small box canvases and created a small hoard of winged ones for friends and relatives. I had started yesterday but it still came out at about 75mins per angel, so a good chunk of the day was taken up with gainful employment.

Annoyingly, as I write, Stu is an hour later than he had hoped to escape from the kitchen hell today. This is one of his 'half' days; only working from 8 to 4 instead of the whole grind through to the dead of night; sadly it is the first day many people will have escaped their icy lairs to indulge in the evil occupation known as shopping, so I fear that he may have been mobbed.

Guess I will complete my own little Christmas present extravaganza and wrap the little angels up for their journeys around the country; and not a credit card abused.

Wonky faces

Okay, this is just a thing that has been playing on my mind, which revolves around three things that I heard recently which tie in together but do not yet form a complete theory.

(Can't write about 'theories' at any time without hearing Sickboy from Trainspotting, but that's a diversion>)

Thing number one is the mention in the Howson documentary of the use of a mirror to check the 'rightness' of a portrait. This is something I do myself; I think we were pointed in the direction in art college. Just never really thought about it before in the context of:

Thing number two, which I read about in the paper the other day; how we see ourselves 'wonky' in the mirror and correctly in photographs. Look over someone's shoulder in a mirror and they look weirdly 'wrong' because we are used to seeing them the other way around; this is weird because they see themselves most often this way and may account for why we often dislike photos of ourselves or find them strangely alien. How does this apply in the case of the portrait painting though - are we checking for 'rightness' or just symmetry? Have I been forever correcting faces to make them better when in fact I am just correcting symmetry, which is not necessarily essential. Because of the third thing:

Which is the fact that we are all asymmetrical to a degree and often (allegedly) chose partners with a similar degree of symmetry. The article that outlined this theory also suggested that we essentially find more symmetrical people more attractive.

As I suggested obliquely in the Sickboy reference, this is not a very good or watertight theory about anything in particular, but the point of interest that I took from it was the question of whether we are striving to paint symmetrical faces unneccessarily due to our urge to look at them in mirrors for correction.

I think that's all I have to say on this for the moment.

Spent a few meaningful and fulfilling hours shovelling snow off the cul-de-sac today and revelling in the cameraderie of it all. Having put up with miserable snow-doom-mongers for the last four days it was refreshing to have a bit of good old fashioned manual labour, meet some previously unacknowledged neighbours and poke fun at others who were resolutely indoors in a good-natured way. One guy had a great 'spade' made of planks, which actually did a fine job and made a further mockery of those whose non-participation rested on the lack of proper implements.

One big chunk of tarmac, now clear of ice and neatly gritted, is now forever mine. Park on it at your peril non-diggers.

Feedback on the wonky face issue will be greatly welcomed as it is bugging me now.

Eating the giant cake

When I was younger I had a recurring dream in which I was in a room that resembled the barn in Rumplestiltskin (Ladybird edition) in which the straw is spun to gold; in my dream it was myself and a mountain of sugar which I was being made to eat with a big dessert spoon. Mountains of sugar and a huge spoon. Last night I had a similar dream about a giant Christmas cake which I was eating as if my life depended on it, fighting off competition to stuff handfulls in my mouth. What the two dreams had is common is the feeling of wanting to eat and not wanting to eat; liking the sugar but being horrified by so much of it being forced upon me.

Sometimes when things puzzle us and their meaning is veiled, writing it down will help decipher the hidden message. Other times, and I am thinking that this is one of these occasions, this is not the case.

I am definately feeling restless and out of sorts though. I am used to finishing a period of painting and then wanting to move on, but I was so pleased with the work I had put up in the show last week that I thought maybe I would feel differently this time. Nope. My mind is already picking holes in the pictures and creating new ones in their place. The itchy feet of painting is possibly one of its curses; I wish that I could sit and relish a moment for once in a while, but I seem incapable. Maybe all this means is that I am not yet where I wish to be; this is certainly true, but it would be good to know that the incessant searching will end at some point. That I will be able to stand and be content with my place in the world and my little creations in it.

Does this have any connection to dreams of eating giant confectionary products? Have I been spending too long in the murky world of food retail?

Oh, and 'Luci', the painting at the top there, is my favourite of the moment and my inspiration for the new canvases under construction; just so I remember what point I was at come the start of December because, no doubt, by January I will have moved on...

Crunchy boots

Another day, another crunchy walk through the stubborn, hunkering snow. Gradually honing my clothing skills to the point that I found myself to be quite disappointed this evening upon returning home... warm. Ate some toasted Soreen loaf anyway, just as a nod to convention.

Tonight the Braidburn valley was really light again; yesterday I doubted my sanity walking there after nightfall, but the cloud was over again and reflecting the city lights onto the snow so that all was orange; slippy orange to be true, as the sledges are polishing the path a bit now...

Listening to Amazing Radio (the name, not my opinion) which is quite refreshing for its mix of new music, and definately an improvement on Stu's staple diet of Planet Rock. I think his midlife crisis started to kick in the moment we changed from Virgin breakfast show to Alice Cooper; the jury is still out as to which is preferable but I do get an awful lot of mileage out of laughing at rock lyrics of a morning. In Hanoi last year I found a hotel called the Hanoi Amazing Hotel and booked in, purely on the name. It was very good in a mad, Vietnamese way and we had a roof terrace looking over lots of other roof terraces over the old town, so I guess it earned its name.

Next week sees the opening of another show with my work represented; the Marchmont Gallery's winter show. Very pleased to see that the flyer and email feature a piece of my work, so I shall be forwarding that about the place. Hoping to get a few sales before Christmas and feeling totally gutted that the snow has hit at the exact time that the show opened at Ritchie's gallery, essentially wiping out all the promotion that I had been firing out, as I really can't see anyone going out of their way to do anything until the snow clears, which could be a long time..

But I guess the main thing is that from next Thursday I will be represented artistically in three shows; maybe something will sell and aid my Christmas funds, but in case all is hopeless I had better start painting little canvases to send out as presents. Plan B.

The question is, can I save the last piece of Soreen until Stu comes home and offer it to him in a devoted show of partnership, or will I cave in, eat it and make up some story about the cats eating it or throwing it inadvertantly in their litter tray....

Along winters night

One of the pleasures of winter; walking home in the dark with the snow underfoot so creaky it is the only thing you can hear. Remembering the thing they always quote about the far north; that you can hear your breath freeze and fall to the ground. Nothing makes a city into a wilderness like snow; in the face of it we are all a little humbled and handicapped. I can almost hear the snow chuckling; 'so you think you are so powerful...'

Came home to a cup of tea and a couple of slices of toasted Soreen malt loaf; it doesn't get much better than that. Legs still burning from the cold and cheeks already turning beetroot from the warmth of the house; who says winter is the worst season. I'm thinking of yurts in the wilderness, mystical songs in the endless nights and innumerable stars spinning overhead.

Just read a report on the life forms that have been found at the bottom of a lake in Yosemite living in arsenic rich conditions 'hostile to life'. Oops, so see all those planets up there that we have described in that manner all these years, not to mention all those episodes of Star Trek...

Cool.

Watched 'City of God' again tonight; such an amazing film visually; how you can make something so beautiful from such a bleak subject matter. Leaving early to finish watching tomorrow however; no matter how long the nights I still seem to need more sleep.