Song Work

I've been working on music for the past few days, in particular the tracks for the long-awaited concept album The End and The Beginning. Some of my planned tracks will have to go by the wayside unfortunately because I can't get them to sound right and I'm fed up with working on this project which is about three years old! The latest song from this, Like a Ragdoll Falls, has been entered into the U.K. National Song Writing Contest. My entry form for this year's Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is now posted too, and I've already submitted a painting for the John Moore's prize too.

Painting Update

I'm currently working on two pictures. The daylight hours are taken up with a picture called The Art of Painting, a complex picture which includes a few different styles of painting including one of Raphael's seraphs, a cave painting and an abstract version of the same figure, and a cubist representation of The Procuress by Dirck van Baburen. I painted a version of this 18 months ago but I thought it deserved a new version because my abilities have changed considerably since then. The other picture I'm working on is in the planning stage and is a large figure painting depicting the beheading of Holofernes, a subject painted perhaps most famously by Caravaggio. My surrealist interpretation is less about Judith and perhaps more about another famous painter of this subject, Artemisia Gentileschi.

Informative Surrealism

Two new underpaintings done this week. One is a surreal construction that's a bit similar to the "Strawberry" painting. A desert in folds, a vine, an arrow and a rose feature. The second is less visually impressive and based on a simple idea about losing creative ability and features a distraught figure in the desert facing a dandelion that has just lost its seeds. I've decided to enter the John Moore's biannual competition in Liverpool, although it was a difficult choice because I'm developing at a good pace and will be in a much better position to produce world class art in two years time.

My newest idea on art theory is something without a name at the moment. Whereas surrealism is expressive, designed to express the subconscious of the painter, this instead tries to trick or insert ideas into the subconscious of the viewer, by the use of visual clues (shapes, words...) that the subconscious mind alone will notice. The Kate Bush as a Winter Tree painting was one of my first examples of this. It was not surreal, not from my dreams or subconscious, but designed to have enough of a likeness there for the viewer's subconscious to see, but not conscious mind.

So, It Has Come To This Poem

A new poem, written (as many of my poems are) for one of my latest paintings.

So, It Has Come To This

So, in this dead sea.
Sky red with sunset's end.
Ice floats by the concrete shells,
the empty markers of this hell.

So, in this hot air.
Choked with carbon's green haze.
Smoke on water, flows,
like acid clothes.

Sea sighs.
Fall then lift.
Fish bodies drift and kiss.
Chemical stained beach rocks hiss.
So, it has come to this.

So Many Years Ago

Another new song. This one is swung and a bit like a Madness song. I'd like to record this but it might be tricky for me.

So Many Years Ago

I still see your, green eyes
as I was speaking to you that day.
Back then I felt, nothing.
I feel it now more, forgive me for the pain
my words caused you.
My curse was made

on that day so many years ago
so many years ago.
but that was so many years ago
so many years ago.
Dry tears, I know, but I can't let it go.

What's retrospect, but an
arrow of knowledge, point of regret.
Who could expect, in those days
you were the lesson, I can't forget
I hear me say...
You blink and turn

away-ay so many years ago
so many years ago.
but that was so many years ago
so many years ago.
Dry tears, I know, but I can't let it go.

(solo)

Now I live there, with an
aristocratic romantic air.
I like to think, that I'm
a bit eccentric, or int'resting to meet
but it's a joke.
Inside I'm broke

from that day so many years ago
so many years ago.
but that was so many years ago
so many years ago.
Too long, I know, I did not sense
the wrong I sowed and now I can't let go.

Mary Brian and The Spiral Staircase

I've been painting all week (my weeks usually start on Friday and end Tuesday) and the main glazing layer of my new Morning Hour painting is now complete. I've also signed two others, So It Has Come To This (is about pollution and is similar to The Flute Player, the football one and other complex ones) and Mary Brian Twenty Years On which is a simple portrait. That makes 3 paintings done in 2008 so far. I'll put them on my website once scanned, which will take until they dry sufficiently.

Meanwhile I've also finished a new track to The Twelve Seasons, the extended version of an old musical idea called The Four Seasons of Dance. This time there is a mix of tracks a moods, around the theme of seasons; three for each. Most of the tracks are done now, only two left to write. This should be my second musical release of 2008, with the new Spiral Staircase due for release on March the first.

Space, Love

I love this song because of the ascending melody (okay, you can't hear that, but the chords climb, a bit like The Beatles' Here There and Everywhere). I had the idea of brainstorming concept albums with simple track list of titles as a way of coming up with song ideas. One album was typically sci-fi and called "Journey to Elsodus IV" and "Space Love" was pencilled in as a track.

Space, Love

Reach up and float to me,
breathe in my space, love
free from your gravity.

See the stars weep in loveless skies.
Breathe in my space, love,
red love in my gold eyes.

(solo)

Kiss me on liquid skin.
Touch me with pure love.
Invite your stone soul in.

See the sun die in frozen skies.
Behold by space, love,
behind my almond eyes.

The Invisible Man

My first song of 2008, number 318 in total.

The Invisible Man

No parts.
No broken clockwork heart.
No bits of hair to, depart.
That's me.
That gap in the crowd.
A snowflake inside, a cloud.

There's no-one to believe me.
There's nothing left to leave me.
My body is clear as air.
There's no eye that can see me.
I blinked and I was gone.
I woke up to find myself
invisible.

Too bad.
My happy life went sad.
I've turned from obscure, to mad.
I call,
but make no sound at all.
The mirror just shows, the wall.

There's no-one to believe me.
There's nothing left to leave me.
My body is clear as air.
There's no eye that can see me.
I blinked and I was gone.
I woke up to find myself
invisible.