It is questionable that any politician should appear on a commemorative stamp, but the choice of bloody Maggie Milksnatcher was inevitable if Prime Ministers are the subject. There is no way however that the evil bitch gets space on my art. I toyed with the idea of defacing it but she is not worth the price of a first class stamp.
The thought of the witch and the ire that rises in me has worn me out so I can’t be doing with writing any more now
It really hit me today when I was finishing off No221 that I may never see it again. Nobody may ever see it again. I rather liked what I was doing and wanted to share it and get some feedback and move it on with other versions, but I can’t do any of that. In ordinary circumstances if I sell a piece there is a finality to the transaction and I may or may not see the piece again, but then I am settled to it. Not knowing and not being able to talk about it is really weird! Plus I’m only 60%of the way through! And, of course, in the Spring it may all go on the bonfire! It makes me wonder even more about those people who create their work in a vacuum and who don’t share it, expose it, exhibit it and sell it. What a torment that would be!
And it’s not just this aspect of the #Letter365 project that is painful: I have taken on a studio that will be freezing in winter. There was just a sense of it this afternoon. Today was the first time I have worn gloves this season – albeit fingerless ones – but I can imagine that I will be wearing them in the studio soon! More self-inflicted pain!
It’s finally come to this: collaborating with a snail! I have given responsibility for the safe conveyance ofNo220 to a gastropod! How long this snail mail might take is out of my hands, and given these mollusc’s love of eating paper, who knows in what state this piece might arrive if at all!
It’s been a busy day today. I sorted out the final pieces for my forthcoming #Collage365 show at Bridport Arts Centre and took them off to the framers. Then went and bought our second car, mainly for Sally’s commute and round town. And that took up so much of the day that by the time I had done #Letter365 we had ran out of time to get to Paul Newman’s preview evening in Gillingham, about which I am really gutted. And now we are off to meet some friends and say farewell before they move and another friend is coming to stay over. The reason I mention all this is that, when under pressure, all sorts of things pop into my head. I get scared to do the things I think are needed in case I bugger it up and have to start again. When will I learn to just do what my heart tells me?
So the headline continues from yesterday. I wasn’t expecting to get much work done but I had hoped to get more admin-type things done. Of course, this state of normality I seek is a total fiction. It’s what I would ideally like to be the case – especially since I have so many things I want to explore in the studio.
This thing about silence on the envelope: I wonder what proportion of people might connect it to Simon & Garfunkel compared to the proportion who may have thought of John Cage?
I am starting to feel frustrated and stressed that I have not been able to spend a sanity-ensuring amount of time in the studio working on my art and I have documentation and admin to do as well and things keep getting in the way. Grieving, illness, looking for a new car and IT issues are just some of the things that have come to stop me and whilst I am resigned to having to restrict my studio time for the next few days to ensuring I do #Letter365 I am still edgy and unhappy about it. It has become a real necessity for my sanity and wellbeing to work at my art and not being able to spend extended hours absorbed in it is bad for me.
Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to do some of the admin I need to do and on Sunday I am confident that we will see an interesting development in the progress of #Letter365!!! I am pitching for a fresh start on Monday so I can finish setting up the studio and get back to decent spells of time just creating art.
Having said all that, #Letter365 is a life-saver for at least I can insist on the time to do something each day!
I used “Don’t look now” as the title of this post because it is written on a Post It note on my desk, because the whole idea of the project is that you can’t look now, but most of all because once again I’m late getting this blog updated and our cat, Henry, has set me a puzzle. Henry’s puzzle is “how do you catch a mouse while holding up a sofa?” So the full title perhaps should be, “Don’t look for the mouse now you have a blog to update.” Henry was not interested in helping me sort the mouse problem.
Henry’s mouse is a rather lovely, scared-but-unharmed field mouse which he brought in while I wasn’t looking, whereas the Post Office brought me a brand new mouse while I was out. They didn’t leave it under the sofa but took it back to the sorting office. The mouse it is to replace is not scared but it is a bit harmed. It is old and worn out and no longer able to scroll at speed or be relied on to carry out basic mouse funtions. Henry was not interested in sorting out these mouse problems either.
I started today’s piece this morning but then had to go off to test drive a couple of cars (yes another new car, this time for Sally) and that all took longer than we thought and then we had Film Society (a good Japanese film, “Like Father Like Son”), so I didn’t get back to the studio to finish it off till late.
Busy with chasing wild geese and such things today so #Letter365 was all left rather late in the day. Then, when I was happy with the piece, I found I had left my camera at home. Because the lights at the studio flicker slightly I can’t get even a half decent image on my phone camera so I had to come back home to fetch it. So it was getting later and later but in the end it got popped in the box in plenty of time and this blog post will be done before midnight too.
That’s three days in a row that we have been to something at the Arts Centre and it’s not usually open on a Monday so my Film Society visit on Tuesday should count as 4 days in a row. This afternoon it was to see “Will and Testament” the new film about the life of Tony Benn with a Q&A beamed live. Spoiled for choice in sleepy old Dorset we are!
The artwork worked out better than I could have hoped. I usually have a really clear idea if what I intend or am empty and open to inspiration. Today I was empty and feeling rough again with this cold. I delved in my brain and got a vague idea I wanted to play with and it all turned out swell – though I suppose you would expect me to say that!