Snowprints, quietly

Feeling like such a bad person; totally forgot to post yesterday! I have been feeling down, which I guess was in sympathy to Stu's blues, so I really wasn't concentrating on anything in particular yesterday. Lucky I have already established that a missed post does not constitute failure unless it stops me in my tracks, which it hasn't. I will just have to keep on blogging after the one year mark to make up for my misdemeanours during the course of the twelve months. To be honest, I am hoping that the year's end sees me move over to a new subject, which will be the progress of our new business... started putting finger to keyboard yesterday with our business plan, so the process is begun. Ha, there now I've said it! I first toyed with starting up on my own fifteen years ago and elements of that time are still in my mind, but now with a lot more experience behind it, so my fingers are crossed. But I run away with myself; we are still in the Bateau-Lavoir year...

Snow forced me to tr

avel to and from cashdayjob by foot today, which afforded a great opportunity for gazing at snowy trees and hills; one of my favourite occupations in the world. I even allowed myself enough time to creep into the little thickets in the Braidburn valley, especially the willows by the burn and just hover there for a while in the early morning light listening to the water and the snow falling. I tend to chuckle to myself with delight at such times so if you were passing a group of trees this morning in the blue dawn and thought you

heard an angel laughing.. nah, it was just me.

Came back the same way and was rewarded with yet more light spectaculars as the evening brought orange

clouds lit by the city and reflected snow, scudding by at lightning speed over the valley; very dramatic and purposeful.

I also met a few snow people out and about today; a relaxed guy sitting on a bench by the Braidburn this morning holding a flower, and a monkey in a trolley outside Waitrose holding a banana. Sometimes I think I am going slightly mad, but I think it is just that there are more mad and creative souls out there than I sometimes give the world credit for. Long may they weave their little magic spells.

Watched the excellent documentary on Peter Howson last night (and the night before, joy of iplayer) and am now in awe of both the man and his experience. I had no idea how good an artist he was or the struggle he goes through on a day to day basis just to make sense of it all and deal with the creativity that just exudes from him. Totally misjudged his work, I have to say, having imagined him as some hard, cocky, trendy art guy; how much differently you read the images when you know a little more of the man behind them. One thing puzzles me, but this is a religion thing and so bound to be confusing... Howson came to religion through a series of revelations as he battled addiction and now sees himself as a Protestant. How does that work? Surely God doesn't take sides when he pops up in visions and tell you which side of the sectarian divide he is appearing from? To me that's the problem with Christianity in a nutshell; it always has to have a label, an affiliation... surely that defeats the purpose?

Maybe leave that one alone.

The next Summit

Ah, the ups and downs, the peaks and troughs... life has its little ways of kicking us when we are down, but also of pulling the rug out from under our feet when we are up.

And its always when you least expect it.... sound familiar? Guess we're all human after all.

Stu is really depressed today; I think he is reaching the end of his own personal endurance and to be honest I am not surprised. The hours he has worked over his career in catering would probably come to double a 'normal' persons when tallied up; there is always one day in his six-day week when he starts at 8am and finishes at around 11pm. That is a long day, and they add up into long weeks, long months, long years. So I am now worrying my little head off again as we are so close to reaching the end of the year, so close to being able to leave the day jobs and head off on our own. This in itself is scary but not nearly as scary as the thought of having to try and make Stu do another year in kitchens or, worse, find some half-assed shitty job that he will hate just to pay the bills. Yikes.

What this will do, of course, is push me harder to make it work for us; to get onto the nitty gritty of how we are going to make our own business work; the whens, wheres and whatevers of it all, for this is the real deal here and we are going to have a lot of hard work ahead of us...

But... and its a big, fat, hairy but, we have no options but to make this work. The line at the start of my blog said it all - I thought one day 'what would I do if my life depended on it?'; then I realised that it did.

Dug the car out literally and myself out metaphorically and crossed town to the gallery where I primed a canvas, looked out the window and thought long and hard. Tomorrow I will start on the business plan and get the wheels of wonder in motion. Had a bit of a Haiku day today, as always happens when I am in reflective mode. I will let them outline my mood today...

Despite the snowfall

The path at my feet was clear;

Even with closed eyes

You are losing hope.

I hope I am strong enough

To hold you aloft

Hold your mind still and

Search the patterns there;

Then open your eyes

The path goes past here

I saw footprints in the snow

And they go beyond

You don't talk much,

I cannot articulate;

So I wrote this down

Les anges, les etoiles et la neige

I really must stop leaving my blog until the last thing in the evening; it has moved progressively down the list after all the other evening chores until I am always totally knackered when I reach this stage.. Last night went really well; my previous show openings (of my work) have been pretty underwhelming so this was most definately a step forward. Last year saw my first 'official' solo gallery show, but as fate would have it, the location was Weston-super-Mare and so I had no friends or contacts to call on except my brother, who gamely made the trip from Bristol to be my moral support for the night. And I needed it; not the most busy room and of course everyone including the gallery owner a stranger to me. 'Experience', I told myself that night sitting outside a pink tent in a campsite in Sand Bay...'What doesn't kill you..'

A year and some on, the experience was greatly enlivened by actually knowing the main participants of the show and being able to call on the support of a few key friends to chivvy me along; luckily we had an amazingly good turnout despite the snow starting to come down (very beautiful) and the multiple attractions of Edinburgh in November calling for support.

My thoughts after the event centred on the issue of self perception; how hard it is to see your own work with any degree of objectivity. I love the description of Teresa in the Unbearable Lightness of Being; she is forever staring at herself in the mirror hoping to glimpse her soul peeking out of the humble, flawed body she finds herself in; I have always related to that in person and with my art.

So the interest in many ways of standing in a room full of people viewing your work is earwigging on the comments, listening to what the viewers see and trying to see it through their eyes. I was interested at the Edinburgh Art Fair when a gallery owner referred to a painter I really like as 'someone you love or hate'; it had me baffled for an instant as it had never crossed my mind that someone would dislike it, let alone hate it... I should know well enough that we all have different opinions; I remember a colleague throwing away a lovely (free with the newspaper) print of Picasso's drawing of Francoise Gilot with the words 'Infantile Shite'. I rescued it sneakily later and it is framed in my house.

So, polarisation of opinion... I have to realise that some people (many!) may dislike my work or find it 'scary' (a quote). There seems to be something about figurative and portrait pieces that can provoke this; not wanting to have the image 'looking down from the wall'. I love having little people on my walls, but I guess that is why I am drawn to paint that way.

A comment I liked on this point last night was one lady had a friend who 'Loved Frida Kahlo, but wouldn't have one on the wall'...

On a positive note, many people came up to say how much they liked my work, and one in particular made my day by congratulating me on my 'lovely hands and feet'. (I'm assuming she meant in my paintings.) Put it this way; I remember a time not so far in the distant past when I expended a lot of energy repainting and repainting hands and feet; then over-painting them. Much has been learnt since then, and much still in process... but that is what I love about the whole thing. It is very, very much a journey for me; a narrative learning experience. I can't see a point when I will ever succomb to the need to be so commercial that I am producing work 'for sale'; this probably means I am destined to be skint for the foreseeable future, but I just have to keep moving and finding things out.

That was the other comment I liked, or that made me think; I was described as 'brave'. If brave is metaphorically laying yourself bare on a gallery wall and asking people to come and have a look, then yes, I am brave. But it has taken me an awfully long time to get brave:)

Have to say that last night, I enjoyed it.

Atop the ridge

Trying to do justice to a great day will be tricky tonight as I am suffering from a mixture of extreme tiredness and some kind of bug which is threatening to take up residence in my chest. I shall make a start and finish my thoughts properly tomorrow... Woke looking like a vampire who had been on the vodka all night; pretty impressive for a teetotaller who is definately not dead or undead. Doesn't kick your day off in the best fashion when you are trying to a) keep eyes open and b) not look anyone else in the eye as you look as if you have just survived a life-threatening trauma. Maybe I have forgotten what a hangover feels like, but it must be pretty close to how I felt for most of the day. Just so happy to be on the other side of it now, sitting at home watching the snow fall and drinking tea knowing that bed is just a short hop and a pizza away.

Really pleased with the turnout tonight; guessing about seventy folks through the door and everyone seemed to enjoy what they saw. Lots of questions raised as well and interesting observations made; this is the bit I will go into tomorrow when I have had time to mull it all over myself. Main thing is that another hugely important baby step has been taken along an irreversible trajectory. As I mused on the way home, it is a lot like climbing a hill and forever coming upon 'false' summits that turn out to be ridges; you know the feeling - 'just a few steps more and we'll be at the top.....oh.' Now I am standing on the next ridge I know it will just be a matter of time to catch breath and then set off for the next 'summit'. Whatever that may be.

Great snow tonight as well; having been convinced it would be a deep freeze disaster we just had some lovely picturesque powder floating in the streetlights on the way home:)

Hanging Happy

Officially no longer painting for the shows any more but managed to sneak one last angel in this morning which was still drying as I drove over to Leith to help hang the show. I am now totally exhausted as I woke with the evil early stages of some kind of lovely chest infection which is totally typical; the number of Christmases, events, weddings, I have spent nursing some kind of stupid bug is amazing... Feeling elated and scared all at once and suddenly annoyed with my hairdresser for cutting my hair just a wee bit too short, so I feel like I have a mushroom head. Potentially my most exciting private view to date and I am a helmet-head. With a cold. And it will probably have snowed by then, which means that I will have fallen on my ass and be black and blue. I'll let some pictures do the rest of the talking tonight and have me a cup of tea and a Vicks vapo rub:) Manana, manana...

Half Time

In a nutshell; took car to have MOT. Failed. Booked in for work to brake pipes next week. Phoned bank to extend overdraft. Took a bunch of paintings into Marchmont Gallery for their Christmas show. Painted another picture having said that I had finished....

Went to see LAU at the Queens Hall and they were totally amazing. Really amazing.

That's half way through the year now:)

Fat lady singing

Okey dokey, for the intents and purposes of the show kicking off on Friday; I have finished. Finito. Fat lady has sung. Last two paintings off the easel were two of my favourites of the four month period and the last one went out with a particular bang as Twig-the-psycho-kit finally managed to jump onto the palette on my lap and cover her back foot in acrylic... a pretty fast piece of work meant that the only area to suffer the pawprints was the studio floor (expendable and expectable), my jeans (nowt new there) and a small portion of sofa (not really visible to the untrained eye). A dunk in the sink, a scrub-a-dub with a sponge and a rub with a towel and the wee lady was back to normal if a little surprised looking. And the good girl didn't as much as try and land one on me despite my scrubbing.

Found an excellent word tonight in the course of my meanderings in cyberspace; 'palimpsest'.
Comes from Roman via Greek or the other way around and refers to a manuscript, picture or whatever that is erased and reused; literally 'scraped clean and used again'. Now all I have to do is find a sentence grand enough to hold it. Can be used also to refer to any example of rebuilding over existing foundations, the remnants of one city under another or the outline of a crater visible under a later impact. Possibilities are endless.
Think it is most definately time I went to bed. All kinds of things to do tomorrow and the eyes are weary.