Cold sweat and refreshing

Bright dawns the day after the storm; awoke back in spirits and calm of soul. On consideration, this was a historic day for my painting and so a milestone is lifted over the date; another gallery has accepted my work and more - offered me the open invitation to submit work as it is created. So, as I painted this afternoon, the picture was no longer destined for an uncertain destination or the pile in the corned, but a trip to the framer and on to a day out at the gallery. Its a big wow for me really and hopefully a 'line in the sand day' as well. Gallery in question is a new one in Leith run by painter Ritchie Collins - I found it by chance when a friend who lives down there took me one sunny afternoon for a walk and a bit of coffee and art looking. Next Saturday is the opening of the show for the start of the Leith Festival and then the Friday after I will be painting in the gallery for the afternoon. So glad I did the Adam House charity show earlier this year, so I hope the intense stage-fright can be bodyswerved on this occasion. I ended up enjoying myself last time but spent the first ten minutes of putting brush to board discovering the meaning of cold sweat - pretty hard time holding the brush steady too (and not a drink in me, not for many a year now).
So, manifold reasons for celebration today; impending travel to south coast, including day trip to Isle of Wight, new gallery inclusion and impending public painting - guess that all helped lighten my Sunday blues of yesterday.
Had a good spell in the studio after that; Stu was rediscovering our LP collection in the living room so a cool and wonderfully rounded sound accompanied my efforts and Twig the kitten managed not to get fixated by the spinning disc and cause catastrophic damage. Remembered my lovely checkerboard sky from an earlier painting, having been posting up the 'archive' section of my website at 6am this morning, so I incorporated that in cerulean blue to echo the tiled floor at the base of the picture. Great when something unexpected works like that; continuing to have good vibes about this pic. as it came unannounced into my head on day and was a dream to draw out after only a few composition sketches. It is always the really effortless starts that seem to work out best in the end; the one on this post is in the Leith show and I love her for the simplicity and the fact that I think the drawing works really well. Again, it was a very 'bish, bash, bosh' drawing, just jumping from head to sketch book to board.
We are kebabing it tonight - lovely skewers of chicken, sweet pepper and onion, which Stu marinaded in some herb oil he created this afternoon. The herb box is just going demented, so to use up some of its copious foligage, he picked a big leafy bowl of spearmint, pineapple mint, fennel tops, vietnamese coriander, parsley, sage, and thyme (not quite Simon and Garfunkel but sung it anyway) and added some garlic and chilli from the kitchen. After picking of all the leaves, it is all about blanching and refreshing; dipping the leaves briefly in boiling water seals and softens them, keeping the all important chlorophyll so the oil ends up a vibrant green and not a murky mud. Refreshing in chilled water after blanching stops the process short of cooking and thus losing valuable vitamins and flavour. The herbs are then blitzed in a blender with the garlic, chilli and a little salt, and oil; the finished herby oil we put in one of those squeezy bottles for marinading (the kebabs were way tasty), sticking in mayonaisse for pittas and wraps, sqizzing on pasta, rice salads. You get the drift - all round kitchen good guy from the garden. So far we stop short at livestock, but I can dream... and there are always those goats for cheesey pieces of tasty goodness. Must away to my bed, for the five thirty alarm awaits to beckon me away to places south and briny...

A blue hat...

A bit of a blue day at the Bateau today; to cheer myself up I have included this photo I took in Florence which just makes me smile. The lovely dog on the centre book is called 'Bum bum' and the unrelated but perfectly positioned girl on the right hand side just has the best expression on her face.
This is the first day I have sat to write and found myself floundering and my psychological state is to blame, I know. The cash-day-job has given my brain a pounding this week as I drew closer to my six days of freedom; the proximity of that much time to myself served to accentuate the banality and my colleagues seemed hell bent on treating me to a bumper display of politics and personality clashes. The net result has been a chair pushed slightly further away from the table on teabreaks; a less attentive ear to conversation, and a quicker turn to evasive action when confronted with human contact. Must it be this way? I feel decidedly alien and out of sorts, wishing I were camping in the wilds watching the stars come peeking out a million squillion miles above me.
And so to dinner came the depressive recluse. Luckily, Stu had masterfully sensed my mood and plumped for a favourite from our travels in Thailand; of all the Thai curries we do find ourselves drawn to the Massaman. Variously spelt, it is essentially the curry of the southern Muslim communites and is less fragrant than the green, red and yellow of further north; it is not often that hot either, although Stu sneaks in a few birds-eye chillies for effect. Lamb is often used, again in contrast to the food of other regions, and because of the oiliness of the meat there is a different texture entirely; a richness and warming spice more similar to the Indian tastes. For some reason it works very well with potatoes and I love the indulgence of the 'double carbohydrate' hit when added to the rice. We used Jersey Royals for a bit of gratuitous fusion and just to see how it turned out, and the result was most satisfyingly earthy and smooth.
Spinach also for a bit of green and some happy vitamins, and we washed it down with some beetroot juice; that lot just has to be good for you.
I am hoping that the combined vitamins, minerals and good vibes will see me awaken in a less cynical frame of mind; it is a shame how small things can bring you down, even when I try my damndest to be a small calm oasis of good nature in a hubbub of friction.
Still, as a firm believer in karma, I rely on the worries within righting themselves given time and a good long sleep. I shall have a look at 'Bum bum' and smile.

Jungle man

Serendipity; one of those words that is equally soft and lovely as its meaning. Someone used it to me today and I realised that I should have used it in my meanderings on coincidence the other day, as in many ways it captures the feeling better. Coincidence is very scientific and precise, while serendipity is a blowsy warm meadow evening of a word.

Her use of it echoed my own experience also; it was serendipity that brought her to live in Edinburgh. I always say that I moved here on a whim and a prayer, but her version is more poetic, so I may steal it and rewrite my own history a little - we all do it after all...

Dreamed I had resorted to prostitution last night and was in some kind of a fix, having failed to show up for work (as a prostitute?!). Not sure how the career structure actually works, but I'm pretty sure my unconscious fantasy version was pretty wide of the mark; it was all very James Bond, with drama, bold lighting and thriller style plot. Quite glad to wake up really.

Another observation of the day is based on the sighting of a favourite couple of mine, who I do not know, but smile at anyway. They smile back, so we must share at least that trait; we are also secret partners in lack of style. Mad dressers- genuinely off-planet, not pretentiously put together - are something I have great affection for. The lady in question was today sporting a purple dress which was interesting in its purity of colour and total lack of fit; this was accessorised with some wonderfully random button badges, a stripy floaty scarf and a kind of tweedy jacket. I find it far easier to trust someone who has this quality of artlessness and strive to find it in myself; but alas, this is when it vanishes like Brigadoon, for this is a thing that cannot be faked or copied. It has the quality of serendipity; a chance arrangement of garments that 'happen' or 'occur'; forcing them into communion is not the same, they must chance upon each other.

I hasten to add that my own style comes from another place entirely and I fear that my mum nailed it long, long ago when she asked wistfully 'Will you ever stop dressing like a fourteen year old schoolboy?' Um... looks like that could be a no, then. I do vary into dresses on occasion, but only of the sort I might have worn at age nine, and even then I feel faintly ridiculous. I can think of nothing worse than being over-dressed, besides being undressed (inappropriately of course).

The mad dresser was carrying, serendipitously, a jigsaw of Rousseau's jungle painting. This was a warm smily evening meadow of a happening because I love Rousseau, especially for his 'outsider' status. I feel slightly defensive when I see him tagged 'naive' or 'primitive', terms which to me never seem anything less than a little smug and elitist - surely there is a more positive term? His pictures make me smile and want to rush off and paint - there is definately an infectious joy in them, for me at least. I should read up on 'Le Douanier' - Rousseau and I have something in common in that we fell at the first hurdle and had to get a day job to provide for ourselves, which obviously distracts from the task at hand of being a painter! The urge to paint is such a strange one - it is so hard to articulate the sense of necessity and inevitablilty to create. To stop drawing, painting, creating; would be to remove a fundamental part of what makes me, me - it drives me nuts, I doubt myself incessantly, but that all seems to be part and parcel of it.

Dinner was a bit of a comfort meal; Stu starts a weeks' holiday today, for the first time he is able to relax as he is day-jobbing now and no longer in charge of a kitchen, so his mood is light. He used to go on frequently about orzo, a little rice shaped pasta that he had tried in Greece but failed to find in this country; now it seems to have made the crossing and we can find it readily. He treated it tonight as if it were rice and made a risotto with some of the chicken stock, defrosted, some broad beans and peas and the usual onion, garlic, some chilli and so on. I love the way risotto takes on such a creaminess as the stock is absorbed despite there being not a whiff of dairy in this one; you can use butter I guess, but this was just oil, so the creaminess is merely texure, not fact. We just had a really simply fried white fish fillet with it which was actually pretty meagre, but the other joy of risotto of all kinds, and especially a bastardised orzo version, is that it is mighty filling, so the fish just filled in the right amount of space and gave a good accompanying texture and flavour. Stu usually raids the ice cream tub after tea but not tonight - he's away to bed on a holiday high with a tum full of peas and pasta. Time to follow...

Pagan meadows

A stunning evening; a pair of crows are doing crow things on the roof outside and making lovely little noises to each other; I love the corvus birds, they are so intelligent and really give you pause for thought as to how much they know about us, things...

Just committed one of my own personal sins; things I have banned myself from doing based on sound evidence from the past that they are not on the repeat list. I cut my own hair - familiar? No matter how many times it ultimately leads to a) ridicule and b) trip to hairdresser I still harbour the conviction that it is a great budget idea and that my creativity natually extends to being a born (thus no training needed) hairdresser. I also briefly believe that I do have eyes in the back of my head. I actually used to hide my hairdressing scissors in the misguided belief that this would curb my habit; just as I used to hide the phone when I had had a few drinks... If you are familiar with the excellent film 'Sideways', you will recall the 'Did you drink and dial?' scene. Yup that was me, that was, and I have long suffering friends up and down the country to vouch for me. There are probably survivors to testify to my lack of hairdressing skills as well, but I don't know if they would pick up the phone.

The sun has once more turned the city's population into pagans, divesting themselves of clothing and offering their sallow bodies to the great one in the sky. The Meadows was a full on Bacchanalia with disposable barbeques and footballs - that would give the Romans pause for thought. Had we managed more than two fair days together last summer in Arran we could have really enjoyed a summer in the wilds without the city getting in the way. I do have some pleasant memories of snoozing on beaches between lunch and dinner service watching the ferry depart and with it our connection to the mainland - a great feeling - Byeeeee!

Started on the new painting with the usual stop-start frustration that comes of having my 'next great idea' in the middle of a spell of cash-money-work. Having to write notes in sketch book and on post it notes to carry over my train of thought, otherwise its easy to sit at the easel 24 hours later thinking 'why the hell is that green?' All the 'final colours' are underlayed with others, sometimes in a cryptic manner, and keeping track of my mindset from the day before is not always straightforward. I'll stick some pics up as I go along on the 'Studio watch' page (love that, I think I should ask Bill Oddie to guest present it for me) as I have actually remembered to take the camera to the easel from the start. This is, of course, the 'Next Great Work' as many pictures start out - always convinced that this is my finest piece to date and marvelling briefly at my own luminous talent, before the comedown and final rejection as I move on to the next object of my self appraisal. I am always glad to know that I am not alone in my lack of self confidence in my painting; indeed the man not known for ego problems, Mr Picasso, supposedly sneaked into the Louvre and looked at some of his paintings in the empty gallery before allowing them to hang there. He wanted to see if they looked 'out of place' with the artists he had idolised through his formative years. My favourite story is about Chagall - lovely biography I read last year in Tuscany prompting lots of my painted ladies to sport Bella Chagall haircuts - who in his later years went to the opening of a show of his much earlier work in his homeland. He was near ninety at the time and after surveying the pieces displayed he said quietly to a companion 'I was good, wasn't I?'

Chagall always seems to get bad press for being self obsessed, miserable, repetitive; I love him for his singular vision and the way he stuck with it. I always love an artist whose pictures show you something you just could not see for yourself - their unique view of a familiar world. Walking around Paris I love to think of him looking to the sky and seeing the flying people, the Eiffel sparkling and the flowers blooming. I think if I could click my heels together and fly anywhere right now I would magic myself beside the Seine; I do love Paris and this weather is perfect for it.

Foodwise, I have been chasing a recipe from long ago; while working in London many moons past I procured a recipe for 'cook up rice' from a Carribean colleague, which was one of my favourite teas of that year. Alas, the recipe is lost in removal and all I remember is that it was a coconut based rice with spices, beans and chicken. Attempts to remake it as a kind of risotto with jerk or cajun seasoning were pleasant but didn't catch the elusive taste lost; I have now found a recipe that cooks the rice in the coconut milk and then adds other ingredients, rather that risotto-ing it- I shall give it a spin and see what comes out, then keep searching. I think with a methodical approach and a weekly trial I may get there by next summer...

Popping weeds

Spent a large proportion of the day pulling up plants, which in some ways feels barbaric, but then if I look at my neighbours garden I realise why it is necessary. Our herb bed is looking so funky now; a few months ago and that was an old futon - we filled it with compost from our own composter too, which is now home to probably around a million ants. Hope they are good for it; as long as they stay there and not inside I have no battle with them. There is one herb in the bed which we have been using happily in our cooking without actually knowing what it is; I know it is a type of mint because I bought it when it was a babby, but I threw away the stick thing and cannot get a good match on the internet. Great herb, though, as they all are; we have more than we can use already. The 'fennel in the fence' is a few feet high now - it is growing up between the two 'layers' of the fence, and peeking its feathery fronds out enticingly; there are baby ones in the herb box too which will I imagine be easy to establish as well as fence-fennel. This is his third year and going for a five foot high I would imagine if not taller.

Spent the remainder of my valuable time off on the laptop editing my website; a slow and laborious task not helped by the sun smiling in at me over the beckoning trees...

Still, a job worth doing, and I have used the time to rediscover hidden gems from our music collection - just finished New Pornographers /Twin Cinema; we have a few of their albums and that is always the one I forget, but love.

Finally time to make for the studio - just looked at a friends new 'bit' on Facebook about her paintings and it looks great; I find it really helpful to be able to connect to people who are in the same boat as me so to speak. It is like egging on a friend at the school sports day.

Ah - spent some time on Haikus today - some days it just happens. This is my fave:

I ate a kipper

Who had the most stunning smile

Until I ate him

I would try a Haiku a day but that would spoil the spontenaity of it all - I have had to pull over the car to note one down before now, and then gone days without finding the right combination of words.

All my favourites have an edge of cynicism I think, but at base I am trying to say something about 'nature', 'our condition', da da, da da, so it is always going to be tinged with melancholy.

'Everything you have will be taken away', as Slaid Cleaves points out on his latest album. I tried to walk into his gig last year without showing my ticket - just wandered by like it was my living room - which seems to have become a bit of a theme. I hope this is the start of the demise; I could really handle being dotty and vague in that way, and maybe people will start 'making allowances' for me in my own little world.

Food wise, a big darn hairy cheat today as I found this fab picture from our hols in Tuscany and felt inspired and nostalgic all at once. This was one of Stu's last meals in the fantastic cottage we had in a working vineyard on top of a hill about 30k out of Florence. Truly awesome setting with more trees stretching into the mist than I could ever count (actually, there's a Haiku about that...).

This is one of those amazingly easy teas which are so satisfying; all that we used were some amazingly fresh bread, meats and cheeses from the Dicomano Co-op and some roasted vegetables, balsamic vinegar, tomatoes, herbs etc. Our hosts made their own olive oil, so some of that featured and it tasted so earthy and olivey I could have happily drunk it out of the bottle; we were also surrounded by rosemary, which ended up bruised and scattered over the top.

Perky and pinky

Some beautiful moments are to be had in the hours before the rest of the world wakes; I once sat on my sofa and watched a yellow mouse creep over the feet of a buddha by my kitchen door as I sat stricken by grief at the death of Frank, our first cat. That was surreal and caused me to wonder if I was tripping, but its the truth; emotion can play tricks with your mind but the truth is unbendable.

This morning I was fed a cup of tea at 5am by Stu, deranged by Twig's antics and persistent playing with masking tape balls under the amp. The tea slowly cooled and it was only once it was below blood temperature that I picked it up and attempted to partake of it. Disappointed I adjourned to the microwave for ressurection, and so began my solo morning contemplation in the living room. A wonder ocurred. Editing my website led to researching artists biographies, led to the Marchmont Gallery, and their artist of the month. Meeeeee! Did I say that out loud? Loud enough?
Surprises are so much better than not surprises; they are just so darn surprising, and so rare to find a good one. Cue perky mood for the rest of the day and vague awareness of said perky mood grating on fellow humans.

Also spent my early hours looking at some art for the hell of it, for inspiration, and because I just love that you can do that on a computer. No I don't think that it is the end of books, paper, art, holidays or normal communication, but its a pretty useful way to spend the early hours and there aren't so many places you can compare and contrast the females nudes and portraits of Leonardo, Rafael, Botticelli and Modigliani unless you are a mouse that lives in the Louvre. (And then you would have plenty of opportunity for creeping over the feet of statues and freaking out grief-stricken mortals.)

I love that Modigliani does scrafito hair; I had never noticed, and I have only ended up using it myself by a happy accident. The last hair I scrafito-ed ended up looking like a tea towel, so my mind started going towards Ingres and his Turkish bathers; now that is a painting - the boy could draw... My studies ended with a run through Orientalism, which I guess is where I am coming from in some ways, as my Far East experiences and references are always as seen by a Westerner and from the standpoint of my culture and study. We are back to fusion in a way.

Great example of that was delivered to our door today from the 'Tartan Curry House' or some such anomaly. 'Tikka chicken with our special sauce, topped with mozzarella cheese.' I believe the phrase I am seeking is WTF...

So the net result of the odalisques, women with fans, recliners and ladies with ermine is the start of a painting with the working title of 'Suki, Greensleeves and Popsicle'; a classic study of feminine beauty and proportion with a healthy addition of potato print. The title occurred to me while weeding and like all good titles, would not leave me until I used it. So here goes.

Dinner was served none too soon tonight as I had napped this afternoon due to my early rise, and so effectively missed lunch. I can't go too far with originality on this one as we effectively finished off some odds and sods with a few new additions. Did a great shop in Aldi's today though and actually managed to sneak in a new mascara; I have no idea if it will last or out-perform the more costly brands, but I am dead sure that it contains less bacteria and dead skin cells than the one it replaces. We also partook of some beetroot juice tonight, which someone told me was a bit odd and an aquired taste - to someone like myself who loves beetroot like my own soul, (bad simile, I do actually like it a lot) it is just heaven. Pink pee manana!

Capricorn friends

Goats' cheese is one of my desert island foods - assuming a refrigerator was one of my luxuries. I got in a conversation about it today with regard to the best use/favourite recipe and it is just endless; the suggestion of my companion was an open sandwich with apple and rocket, which sounds good. I countered with my multiple experiences of 'chevre chaud' (a name I love - 'hot goat') in Paris, like every single lunchtime for a week probably. The permutations are subtle from one establishment to another, but only in the degree that the gingham table cloths and cane/wicker chairs vary. All, however, especially when it is sunny and the view is of the Pantheon, are unbeatable. Another favourite is pinched from Pizza Express, an establishment with which I have a long association insofar as my 18th birthday, leaving London 'do' and a few others to boot were held in its branches. (Sadly they let me down on my last birthday outing and I am sad to say that the memory sticks and it may be a while before I return; depends how lasting is the memory of s****y service, rubbish food and indifference.) Their Bosco salad, or a version of it, often graces my kitchen still as it features many of my favourite foodstuffs and a great concept; warm salad. Mushrooms are fried slowly and lovingly in olive oil with garlic and maybe a herb of choice, and spooned over rocket, avocado, charred red pepper and goats cheese. The Pizza Express people serve it with their own dressing, but a really good vinaigrette or balsamic based concoction will also be good; they also add the infernal doughballs, which I cannot eat due to their very doughiness - same effect as wheaty, sugary stuff.
And goats! What finer animal to produce such a gracious food product. Long have I dreamed of owning a paddock and pen of lop-eared, gangly-legged friends who will eat all the leftovers and greet me of a morning with one of the finest smiles nature has to offer. Ah, one day...
Thinking of new paintings today; not doing any but conjuring images in my head to see how they look in there. Quite how they will translate once I get going is another thing, but it is fun to toy with them in the safety of my imagination. Portraying the human face is something I can never get enough of; I read that figurative art is of the past and lacking in relevance, but still I am drawn. The guys who really impress me are often, but not exclusively, those who can handle a full composition of figures, in the multi-plurals; Botticelli and Bruegel are two I have had a thing for over the past year. I am still toying with the idea of a trip to Vienna, not just to sing the Ultravox song upon landing, but to visit the Bruegel room at the History of Art Museum (its got a great name in translation, but I'll have to look it up). They have an oval room with around seven of the great, big Bruegels just sitting there looking at you - it is hard to imagine and unforgettable one seen I would guess.
Dinner tonight was not quite in the league of seven Bruegels, but still pretty memorable. Stu had marinated the chicken breasts from his butchery in some of that lovely soy sauce and roasted them nice and simply; the clever bit lay in the accompaniments today. Finding a tin of mango, it was diced tinily with equally tinily diced onion, garlic and ginger (raw) and wallowed with fish sauce, lime juice and finely choppped leaves from out herb bed, heavy on the Vietnamese coriander. This little salsa lifted the whole meal and was so fresh and light; we also had some confit peppers and onions - very slow cooked in olive oil - and the plainest steamed rice as a foil to all the flavours. Tomorrow we have swung a day off together so shopping list is at the ready for the final budget shop of the week, after which we will see what the day brings us. I will be starting a new pic for sure as I have had a couple of days off the brushwork and I feel deprived.