Music Pages, Hope and Death, Painting Thoughts

Today, updated the music pages of my website to include a Spotify embed, and removed the smaller booklet page images, and track list except for albums not on Spotify. This simplifies the look and the logic of the page's code:

Also submitted a track to Tom of Aldora Britain Records for a 50p promotional album to be distributed with other artists. I sent an image of my 'Abandoning Someone' painting for use as the cover. Later, glazed the small 'Hope and Death' painting. It's much better looking now and only took about 60 to 90 mins to glaze, but it took about an hour to become enthused for this necessary job.

I'm still reading Kafka and wonder if I'm like Kafka or being bent towards him with his words. At times I feel squeezed out artistically, but and yet perhaps don't. I'm eternally creative and eternally busy; it is Kafka who writes about being squeezed and when I feel these slight periods of stoppage, I recall his words and being. I tend to pause only for a short time before darting on a new and more alluring tangent, like the router table. Today I thought of darting out for wood to make the inner bevel, the insert, for one of the frames I have - yet I have no painting for that frame, so it would be a waste of time and money in the short term.

Perhaps even the router table is or was a waste of time, yet my instincts seem to work well, and many follies or diversions tend to become invaluable over time. My painting abilities, my music abilities have grown because of a drip drip of hundreds or thousands of little innovations, many fractions-of-percent's of improvement over many years.

As I age I find I have less solid focus on one thing. Years ago I would work on one game for months or years (The Heart of Aorkhan, Arcangel, both multi-year projects on which I did nothing else - to my detriment, I should have given up or expanded on other bow-strings). Now I dart between more jobs, yet this darting leads to more refinement. The process is like adding the fringes on a fern, or the last stages of evolution, compared to the solidness of the leaf and core design. Ageing itself and evolution seems to echo this. Animals from millions of years past seem to look smoother, be less detailed, somehow. The universe too, older stars are more crude and chunky, the newer ones with a wider range of elements, more detail. I am struck by these links between the micro and macro, the body and universe.

So what must I focus upon? What should my goals be?

Music Animations, Exhibition Entries

Spent this morning making 24-second vertical format videos for every music track on The Myth Of Sisyphus and War And Nuclear Love. In the afternoon, entered the next RBSA open exhibition, and prepared labels and details for the other three local exhibitions I'm taking part in; Bunbury, Tarporley, Bickerton. My mouth remains swollen and in bad shape. I felt too tired and somewhat dopey after 3pm to do much.

I should ideally prepare a study for the Telepathic Daisy painting, and start to glaze existing works now. The Good Vibrations event on Wednesday means I can't paint, then so can't paint tomorrow on a big work either.

H Beam Underpainting Complete

Completed the H Beam Piper underpainting today. Challenging due to the glazing of the text areas but I'm hopeful that challenges can be overcome.

H Beam Piper Painting Day 1, Tooth Pain Returns

Started early today by cleaning the gilding on the H Beam Piper portrait, then began the underpainting. Painting oil portraits is challenging, made more difficult by painting on a smooth panel. This was made more difficult still by being larger than life, and by having a poor resolution black and white photograph as the primary source, and made yet more difficult by the need to change the expression from mild delight into to worry. I met this challenge.

A good day of painting but tainted by tooth/gum pain, seemingly a recurrence of my problem from February. The pain has grown after lunch into an unblockable ache at time of writing. Back then, my dentist could do nothing except offer a mouth shield, which I've worn diligently each night. It has had absolutely no effect. My only choice is to cope with the pain. I pray that it will subside soon.

Cat Bat Nightmare, H Beam Piper Transfer, Framing Descartes Again

A sleepless night. Awoke at 2am and remained awake until about 7am, then slept into a nightmare. I was pursued and tormented by two witches who were perhaps my mother and another relative (both young however). They were undead and chasing me around a house and laughing. Our cat, Cat, back from the dead was there, now malevolent, and could transform into a long thin bat which had a sharp claw at the lower end, which would flick out to attack a victim. I knew this this sting was deadly and had to dodge its whip many times. I spent much of the dream running a hiding, being discovered and running again.

Cat was perhaps in my mind as it was recently the 6th anniversary of her death; she once caught a bat in out garden. The bat in my dream was primarily inspired by an object in the Telepathic Daisy painting I drew out yesterday, a shape representing the spectre of death inspired by a rag of clothing in the wind in Wyeth's 'Christina's World'.

I worked today as I could. First, tracing over the H Beam Piper drawing to the new panel. This time I transferred the book text using a laser print on newsprint. This thin paper jammed the printer every time (I tried thrice) but perhaps because of this, the toner was not set and remained loose and dusty on the paper - perfect. I pasted GAC100 on the substrate and stuck the (mirror image) paper down. Once dry, it was easy to wet and rub away the paper for a very good transfer of the image, and archival, flat, and suitable for oil painting over. When drying I applied gold size and new gilding, so the panel is now ready to paint.

Then, work on a new frame. I've decided to enter the Descartes painting into the next RBSA exhibition (my first attempt at an entry there since 2019 - I say attempt, but I've been lucky in getting something in every time I had tried at that liked gallery - I can only hope for this again). Its frame is shared between three paintings of the same size, including the Cromwell portrait which will be in Nantwich Museum at the time, so I need to prepare a new frame. An ideal time to test my new router one my think - but no; I have no money for wood, yet do have some old framing wood in stock, so have decided to use the last couple of lengths to create a new frame. Two 2.4M lengths are needed for this big frame, so I started the first step of gluing the decorative flat front piece to one behind, leaving a 10mm recess.

After that, tracing over the Telepathic Daisy drawing. I'll paint some portraits for next years RBSA Portrait Prize. I wonder if this Descartes painting would have counted? Perhaps. Many of my portrait ideas will be surrealistic looking, of course, such as the Kafka.

Painting Struggles

Something of a frustrating day. I didn't want to charge into painting as the last few days have been tiring and long. I started with simple admin, documenting the router table, then looking at a few art ideas. Suddenly enthused, I scanned two: the Kafka portrait and one called 'The Earthly Concerns Of A Telepathic Daisy':

I prepared and drew this out but the composition had problems. The square shape and central face made it too flat and unexciting. I needed to add more, so did this and have referenced Wyeth and Van Gogh - both relate to the subject. I've sized it for 400x400mm, a little larger than in the past few years. I'm starting to size things larger this year.

At times I don't know why I'm painting what I'm painting. I seem to walk the line between too arty to be decorative, too arty to be 'liked' or imagine placed in the middle of a stylish wall; yet not arty enough to win a contemporary art award or attract serious collectors or critics. This said, the 'contemporary art awards' I see favour pretty decoration anyway. I look at some of my works, like the long awaited, long dreamed of, Rachael Hudson painting and wonder who would like such a thing? Only me perhaps. I don't feel it would win an award, or even be selected for a competition, despite its uniqueness. Indeed it hasn't yet been chosen to be displayed. I have similar issues with the Kratos cabinet, the AI Vermeer. Too arty? Not decorative enough? Not arty enough? Perhaps I could add more to the Hudson painting, make it all better. I have plans, had plans, for a whole Rachael Hudson installation. It would take my pointless, uncommercial, undecorative art to an extreme.

So, I'm starting to imagine a setting, a wall, a competition. I've not done this much, I chiefly consider how 'good' the idea is to me, and that's all. One offshoot of this thought is the desire to paint larger. I now have a few exhibitions and competitions in mind, so can think of what to create for those.

After lunch I started work on the text element of the H Beam Piper portrait (a painting ideal for such a competition). I stuck some collaged book pages to the panel and didn't like the texture. I became more seriously worried about the archival stability of the old and scented newsprint of this ancient yellowed book. I felt sure it would have become browner and browner, and ruined the painting. So, I scraped it off and decided to try an image transfer of the text instead, in the more permanent medium of laser print.

My test transfer on a piece of wood worked, but alas the actual transfer didn't - it melted the acrylic priming, and worse, heated the glue of the surrounding masking tape so much that it became permanently gluey and mixed with the acrylic priming. Essentially, the panel was ruined; and with it, two days work of preparation and gilding.

So after that, I found more more MDF, and sawed a new panel. I've just prepared that. I am unsure, however what to do about the image transfer.

The RBSA Prize Exhibition has a deadline of the start of May. Could some new work be finished? I fear that most of the competitions have deadlines that are so close that I can barely make any. I started my painting year in April. Most competitions need work in May - hopeless.

We can but try our best in the forlorn trudge of life. Let us roll our rock, eye on the horizon. We have far to go before the eternal sundown.

Life and Dreams, Router Table Day 3

One brilliant thing about the film Midnight Cowboy is how it shows one truth; that we spend much of our lives aiming for a dream, in Rizzo's case a warm place of comfort and peace by the sea, but how that, in reality, we end up dying before this dream becomes a reality. In my case my dream is a house of my own, a place to live and to work. A house with an art studio, a workshop to create my inventions, devices, picture frames and sculptures, a music room, a garden to enjoy with Deborah and our dream cats. It can seem at times that this dream is getting closer, even just at our fingertips reach, but a certain critical moments it vanishes in a puff of reality.

Felix Mendelssohn spent his life trying to please his disapproving father, and died failing to do so. Kafka wrote about 'the eternal torments of dying', a description of the general job of living. The tragedy of life is that all things are dying, everything in the universe. The cruelty of entropy to those aware of the transience of data integrity. Dying is data loss; loss, loss. Losing grip of what once was. Life melts into mist like one's dreams.

It's now shortly after 3pm and I've just completed the bulk of the work on the router table. The cradle and it's holder drilled, and rivnuts fitted. The main guide bolts fitted, the table tested, then a 36mm hole drilled in a pile of wood for the vacuum cleaner holder. This is the last remaining step before the initial plans are complete. I may need to add some wheels to hold the wood down, or make other modifications.

Anniversary, Router Table Continues

Yesterday marked 10 years since I first met and interviewed Deborah on Artslab. We spent the day together to commemorate the day. I managed to enter a new exhibition in Cotebrook near Tarporley.

Today, charging into a list of jobs. Entered the Morecambe Poetry Anthology competition, but most of the day was spent working on the router table. First, marking verticals, and some thoughts about a hoover attachment. For this I decided to cut a 100x21mm slot in the lower wood, and I'll make a box (which will fit the hoover pipe) which will slot into this.

Then, drilling the ends, and recesses for fixed nut ends. Then, glueing the rollers. These need to be precisely placed, so are best glued then drilled and screwed. The 21mm ends were then glued to the base, and the right and lower bars glued to the router cradle. I might need to design some sort of firmer clamp for this to hold the router solidly.

I've glued the wood with the hoover attachment slot partly cut so that it can be placed accurately. Once set I'll make the final cut.