The Hanging of Judas Iscariot 2

Clouds, mountains, sea waves, cloth folds, trees, plants, all natural forms have a formula that once learned makes good approximations of those reproducible from the imagination. The formula for cumulo nimbus clouds is easy, they are spheres on spheres, smaller on larger and so on and so on down to infinity. Today I did my first mountains with as much ease.

The hormones painting is now finished and drying. Today I did the first of two days work on another small one I've shown on here before, The Hanging of Judas Iscariot. Both pictures are 254x356mm which is my favourite size. It's big enough for a masterpiece but small enough for painting to be fun and not a chore. I've got about four others of that size planned and drawn out, three others of medium (about twice that), and three really big ones. Every time the size doubles the work seems to quadruple. I need more pictures! More! I'm full of ideas but the planning takes so much time that I seem to be rushed every day. There's time enough for new paintings later.

My solo exhibition needs setting up and opening this week. On Friday I begin the main glazing layer of Perfection and Necroamoria. A painting that I want more time for, but it should be good enough to enter into the competition and worth the (actually quite considerable) train fare to drop it off in July.

Writing, Hormones, and MPs

I'm spending my days painting and writing poetry and my evenings writing prose, or trying to, learning to, studying how to. So far my writing is cold and logical, aptly descriptive but emotionless like my daily personality, but my poems like my art are loaded with feeling. Trying to bridge these two is my goal then. My experiments are taking place on a story about a leprechaun and a sheep, which I've written in synopsis, then expanded to a short draft and now expanded further. I will write it again in a different style.

In painting, the underpainting to Financial Circumstances is now complete, as is a very automated painting called Female God which I last worked on in November (I added an improvised landscape). Today I've been working on There's A Lot to be Said for Hormones which so far is as perfect in execution as I could hope for. My days are filled with work and painting then which is a perfect distraction. I wonder if my life is to be like this forever.

Our member of parliament Edward Timpson is to visit my exhibition next month which is a nice surprise. He seems like a nice chap, and I voted for him which is bound to help with rapport.

Financial Circumstances 1

A painting day but I decided to ignore my plan of starting work on The Apocalypse Of Finance, and instead chose to work on a few smaller works starting with the related Financial Circumstances which is about financial collapse. After that I might start on The Lightning Of Creation which should also take about two days to underpaint. Then I'll work on "Perfection" again and then start some glazing because I already have a large number of underpaintings to work on and it's high time I finished something.

It's nearly the end of May yet my 2009 gallery is looking rather sparse. That is an inevitable consequence of my plan to design in winter and paint in summer, a plan looking increasingly flawed because life energy comes with the long days as well as mere light to paint by. I'm finding it as tedious to paint now and not create, as I found it frustrating to create but not paint over the winter.

I can write the occasional poem while painting though and I've decided to win the national poetry competition this year which is a surprise for me, because I've only entered once before and I wasn't at all very good at writing poetry then, but my poems can vary in quality and just recently they seem to be much better than before. I've written two good ones so far. I've also decided not to publish my poems online from now on. Many competitions forbid it, and a future publisher might not like it either.

The Tumour

Today was a light day before starting painting on a big picture tomorrow. I hesitate to paint such a big and arduous work because I'm very tired and actually worried that I might be ill with fatigue because I seem to be feeling weak and like sleeping all day. I've just booked the delivery van for my exhibition so all that is planned now and I can relax.

However another thing I've been doing is working on my novel. I am now convinced that the best way to write is to first come up with a rough synopsis, then add another "layer" by rewriting what happens in each chapter, then another by rewriting each chapter again as a series of statements about what happens in more detail, and so on. This means the whole novel can be written not from start to finish but from any point, each bit refined at any spare moment.

It's untitled so far but I'll call it The Tumour for now. I'm currently working on Chapter 4 which is very philosophical and have made a re-enforcement of my knowledge about the nature of knowledge and the universe; that, multi-dimensional and extant as the universe is it is uncertain too; in the past, future and in fundamental knowledge, including mathematics. Quantum mechanics is everywhere large and small, in philosophy, and in knowledge and every daily experience.

Opposites

Today I have concluded that I am myself and my opposite at the same time. That makes me a natural surrealist. It is definitely true that I've noticed that for every argument and feeling I want to argue and feel the opposite too. Also when calm I want action, and when active I want calm. Today I think this is because I talk to and argue with myself too much. The vast majority of my conversations are with myself (as is this one). That has been the case for over a decade at least.

Perhaps in some way all surrealists are like that. Certainly the ability to perceive opposites instinctively is an essential requirement and I'm increasingly convinced that thinking in a surreal way cannot be learned, but is a product of a contrary nature. I suspect that I am highly social yet by circumstance remained anti-social and thus my metal spikes of emotional connectivity were bent inwards and point at me instead of at others.

Who knows how other surrealists thought. From what I've read it seems that I'm very like Bréton, was his schism caused by Great War trauma? I think like Dali too, was he a naturally social child but isolated by circumstance? Who can say.

If we could choose our lives, in full, before we were born... what choice would we make? Is life better when conformist or when different?

For an artist, different is better.

Perfection and Necroamoria 7

A strangely tiring day painting Perfection and Necroamoria. I normally paint in a opaque underpainting then a single glaze. I think it's most efficient way to paint, and I think that one glaze hue, one underpainting hue, and an imprimatura (wash) hue are the most colours that can be detected. In perfect circumstances the underpainting is very smooth and detailed but sometimes a second sub-glazing layer in underpainting colours is useful and that is what I'm working on now. I remain unhappy with the embracing octopus part though. That will ideally need another correction layer but time is against me.

Now I'll start a new drawing for I'll Be Here For You. I have decided to paint it properly.

Never Be Far

Another poem written today, below. I'm trying to write a short story and it is good practise. I'm not much of a writer because I don't read but I am very analytical and can decipher; description, emotion, characters, speech, actions, scenes, thoughts. Each part of a story conveys a part of those and like a painting the fundamentals of writing are the same; the story and meaning is paramount, and the emotion, and the beauty of the language of secondary importance. As sad day, for me, spent working on Perfection and Necroamoria but I'm not very happy with it and have felt tired and empty all day. I'll try again tomorrow.

Never Be Far

Whether in the next room
or in the next country,
or in the next world,
or close to that star;
I'll love you and feel you
like a light bulb inside me.
If I pretend that you love me
you'll never be far.

I'll Be Here For You

I painted this in my Art Support group on Wednesday. I'm unsure whether to glaze this, or restart the painting using this as a study. The painting is called I'll Be Here For You and was inspired by comments that those words are often spoken but not enacted. I'll describe it more fully when it's finished.