The Safe Box, You Know How It Is

Painted yesterday, adding a tentative layer to The Safe Box. I came up with a new painting idea, You Know How It Is When You Remember A Friend, and worked on resolving this into a more refined vision while keeping the feeling. Too little time tonight for more commentary on this interesting and vital process.

Today, a happy visit. Crewe Council have announced a public art commission for a major work measuring 23 by 8.5 metres using perforated steel. I have immediately drafted a few ideas, studying many elements of Crewe's past, present, future. I've been reading about types of cubism, too. I have the idea for a Crewe symphony to accompany the work. I can just picture the performance.

Moon Over Shakespeare Glazing, Journey to the Centre of the Earth

A slow day yesterday, but reframed both new works, these are complete. Then, the slow turn back to painting for the first time since the start of the month. How I always miss it and how much more I can and want to paint! Today I completed Summer Holiday from the English Triptych, and started work on the glazing of Moon Over Shakespeare. The key is to attack the best and most urgent paintings first. These, after painting them, instantly lose their fear and sense of awe - that juice sucked from them by the next great idea, the next conception of masterpiece.

The sky was worked over, delicate smoothing and some modelling, and the cypress trees which flank my mock-Elsinore. See the contrast of the new sky and the underpaint of the rock.

The painting world is waking up. Many local artists, I glean from the literal waste-of-time which is social media, are taking part in exhibitions here and there. I have my few works in The Macc Lounge and have heard more on the prospective pop-up for this autumn which I'll take part in. I've also entered the Discerning Eye with my usual high hopes and aspirations. I'll aim to spend September, the last month of light, painting.

I listened to Rick Wakeman's Journey to the Centre of the Earth while painting. The album makes me laugh. At times it is so epic and fantastic in sound, but there is something so false and deliberately comic about it. Deep questions of life, death, and spirituality are asked and the answer is always a jazz-funk rock solo - the contrast is massively comical. The group find the long-dead body of a quaternary man, and a romantic song is sung about his mysterious life, then the group find a real-live pre-historic shepherd - but he's not worth singing about so is basically moved over. Hilarious. The album is effectively romantic; an exposition of skill and bombastic feeling over anything deeper, the choir and enormity of the sonic forces add to this. For this genre everything must be 'over the top'. The album is nothing deeper than this, and is a success for it; it's a triumph of performance not of music or narrative and even less-so of lyrics.

Frames Done, National Poetry Competition

Rather a slow day today. I had hoped to move onto the music recording but now I'll move the my focus back to painting./ The lighthouse beam of my mind will take a day or two to rotate. I started the day by launching the sale of my PC game Taskforce and releasing Outliner. I played short games of both.

I wrote a poem for the National Poetry Competition today and entered that. I've entered every year since 2009, and, though I don't expect to ever win, it does my poetry good to push myself, and it does poetry itself good to enter... some paid contests are like patronisation of the art, and this is one, so I enter this to support the art of poetry a little.

Then I tidied up my frames, brushed off the flakes of gold, and framed the two paintings. Sadly, the bright gold frame was too bright, it was like a glowing light that made the delicate painting look too dark, so I decided to revisit the other frame. I distressed and sanded its edge and added some brown to give it a sort of bone-like hue. That looks fine now; so two frames are done, and I have a spare very gold one... I think I'll dull some of it and perhaps dust some of it, but all later.

This evening I entered the Discerning Eye. I'm not sure if I really feel like moving back to painting immediately, but I must. Perhaps I could start with some new ideas or work on one of the glazings. Underpainting is always much more fun than glazing.

Frames, Van Gogh, SY-85

Gilded the inner edge of my frames in the morning.

It was probably the best gilding experience I've yet had with loose leaf. Transfer leaf is so much easier. There are many skills and tricks with gilding. First, you must never touch the gold (or anything that will) with fingers. I now use two knives (see picture) to manipulate these leaves like a veritable Edward Kniveshands. The key skill is perhaps that the oil size must be exactly the right dryness and very thin and even. If it is too wet it can 'squidge' through the gold and make a terrible mess. if too dry, the gold won't stick. In an early attempt, I used epoxy casting resin to gild with, and this actually solved this problem because epoxy sets internally, but this is perhaps overkill; epoxy is hard and goes yellow and (probably) brittle.

Well, my pad worked well enough and the gilding was done by 1pm.

I read about van Gogh again on Wikipedia. When I started painting, back in 2004, I read all of van Gogh's letters in order. All artists have an affinity with van Gogh. Again I feel I'm exactly like him, except that he was mad and I am sane. In one 70-day period he painted 80 paintings, how shamefully unproductive I feel! But I do spend a lot of time making frames, and presenting the work and doing all sorts of silly notations, and the work of exhibiting, and writing music. Perhaps he had the right idea.

His early works were dark and dour. Everyone loves his later prettier works because people like pretty things and pretty colours. Was he painting to please others? We all paint beauty, dark or light.

My next step: to try to get my SY-85 and OctaMED set up working. I can't recall how I recorded it before, but I had to at least mix the input from the computer and the synth; I almost certainly did this with a simple Y wire or splitter, rather than using a mixer. Now I will use a mixer. I tested it today and it seemed to work, and I noted that my Zoom H4 can record in 24-bit (and up to 96khz). I think 44100hz in 24-bit will be better than 48000hz in 16-bit. There's no point in wasting the hard drive size of extreme audio quality.

But, sigh, the USB floppy drive would not read or write the DS/DD discs, despite the description claiming to. In fact, I can't find any floppy drive for sale which will read DD discs (these are 720kb, as used by the Amiga, Atari ST, and other early machines like my SY-85. Later discs were HD, 1.44Mb). I think the new Sony drive I've fitted to the SY-85 will read HD discs, so I've ordered some floppies to test this.

It's really taken immense effort to record this music: buying and fitting a new floppy drive to the synth, and buying a new drive controller for it. Buying a floppy drive for the PC, some discs (both DD and HD), a MIDI cable, and a USB MIDI device, and getting OctaMED from the 90s working, and all for some ancient music which was never very good in the first place - but, it's better to keep it than lose it forever, and of course, quality is very subjective. To my teenage and 20s ears, it was the best music I had done.

We picture in our minds an ideal and strive towards it, so the present is always unsatisfactory and frustrating. If we pictured a worse life, we might be grateful for what we have in a 'Scrooge redeemed' way, but probably more fearful and downbeat. Not picturing or striving for anything would be stagnation, even if we felt happy in a Buddhist sort of way. Striving towards something an ideal and recognising the consequences of the struggle and the frustrations of perfectionism is, for me, the best option.

Hopefully these chains of the past can be cast off and I can work on new art. I have 11 PC games that are currently unavailable and need remastering: Arcangel, Roton, Martian Rover Patrol, Trax, Outliner, Breakout Velocity, Fallout, Bool, Firefly, Gunstorm, Gunstorm II. I have no time or incentive to do this for now. Perhaps I'm trapped too much in the past, although I know that art, like mining, is tunnelling and shoring up the tunnel. Everything, for me, is long term.

Frame Painting, On Skill, Exhibitions

Finalised my filing, and painted my frames today. I started by filling the little gaps with more gesso, then sanding. This worked rather well, better than I expected. Then, paint. Here are the results so far:

Unlike my tests, the grain was rather raised with these. It does look rather nice, actually, but was unexpected because it didn't happen before. Perhaps more vigorous sanding would stop this because to some extent it is 'faux grain' due to brush marks in the deep gesso. My mix may have been more paint-rich than my more watery test paints. A layer of sealer (I think a polyurethane 'yacht' varnish would be a good choice) might help. I could paint some areas and not others to control the grain effect.

The painting went ok, and these frames do look better, and with more ease, than the others which took me days of effort. I will add gold leaf to the inside edges.

So I'm making a flat pad to put and cut the gold on. Previously I've used a sponge with cloth lightly rested on, but the sponge is too soft and cutting is difficult.

Doing this made me think of 'skill' and 'talent'. I was sanding quickly, but well, and thinking about craft and skill. I'm always slightly offended when people say that I am 'talented', as though I possess some natural ability vs. years of hard work and endless practice and learning and trying every aspect of something. I don't believe in talent, but then what is a skill?

It made me think how some well-practiced skills and crafts might appear divine to the eyes of people from the pre-machine age. Now we can see machines making beautiful things. Would we call their acts skill? If so then skill is simply a list of rules, and perhaps programming, the first thing I learned, is a universal skill indeed. Programming teaches us that anything is possible by the application of logical rules, step-by-step, done without emotion. Any skill is this, so part of mastering a skill, such as oil painting, such as composing music, or playing the piano or guitar, is a matter of knowing these rules, and if needed, making them.

With each step of my framing job, just as with each step of every painting, I write up what I've done and try to break things into a list of rules like this. So, perhaps there is no skill, other than the skill of this knowledge; the skill to make rules and obey them like a machine would. One day, after years of doing this, someone might consider your actions a talent, but we will know that it would be wrong to call a computer 'talented' for its execution of a good chess program.

After gilding, and framing, my outstanding jobs are to record my 90s OctaMED music, which would free me up to sell the SY-85, then finish the paintings in progress (will I have time to paint more? I would love that), finalise the Nantwich Museum exhibition plans, and photograph the completed works with my new photo-rig.

The Macc Art Lounge is open again and has a token few of my paintings, kindly exhibited, curated, and vended by Ché. I don't have time, or transport confidence, for now, to man the shop and fully take part in activities there. At the moment it is the only outlet for my paintings. I may have a London exhibition opportunity soon, but art opportunities are limited to that and any competitions I enter from today. Things are just waking up from the needle-prick of Covid's enchanted sleep.

Blue Gesso

Completed draft 1 of my new files yesterday, so racing back to framing work. Feel tired and a little overwhelmed by my hamster-wheel existence, but there is no alternative. What is life but activity?

I made a couple of frames a few weeks ago and now I'm making two of the same size, for the same paintings, with a new (hopefully better) procedure. I started by gluing the top and back together to create a length with a 10mm rebate. Today, I measured these to a full length, then sanded the inner edge, to round it off a little, adding a smoother slope into the painting. Then I sanded the back with a power sander, far more efficient than doing this by hand. I had considered planing the back, but my tests showed that this gives a worse finish, and the back is very nearly flat anyway.

Then a coating of my home-made blue gesso. I used about 90ml of chalk, then liquid acrylic paint and water to make a paint of a syrup-like consistency. This was difficult to apply, it was rather thick, went sticky very quickly and had to be poured on, but this was a good way to apply it, lots of paint, poured and brushed. It made the process messy but relatively quick. There was time to texture it, and this worked really well. The pouring method was anticipated, and not much of a problem. Generally, in paint, several thin coats gives the smoothest finish, but this is a thick chalk layer that is very easily sanded.

After that, the two lengths looked like this:

The paint is dark at first but goes dramatically lighter when dried, this itself really helps see the exact texture of the surface which is really useful. White gesso is far less useful for this reason. The length on the left is sanded, it goes even lighter then. When wetted (with more paint, or varnish, or water) it becomes a fabulous dark blue. It's really quite miraculous.

The latter shows the texture.

After that, sawing and gluing. This was surprisingly inaccurate; most of the cuts were perfect, but the one I expected to work best seemed just wrong. Anyway, this isn't important. The frames are now gluing and when set, I aim to apply more gesso to fill in any gaps, thus, it should look like one smooth object.

The grain is raised by the water-based paint. I wonder if a coat of something solvent based (Paraloid B72? Polyurethane Varnish?) would seal it and allow super-smooth application of paint.

This is fun, my frames must look good and be part of my craft, but it doesn't feel like the best expression or use of my abilities. I must strive to create new paintings and music that are, again, better than I've done before, and I feel I can, but this is always difficult. I'm pulled regularly to tedious jobs to scrape for money, and the admin work; filing, records, though necessary, feels unproductive. The three paintings in progress might be my last of the year.

It's been a good painting year in craft terms but I feel I've only started, and want to create larger and more epic work. The 2021 clock has beaten me. I spend so much time improving or caring for older work, and soon I must work on a new cabinet for the Richard Dadd painting... a long-term aim. That was my first major woodworking project, and I've learned a lot in the 9 years since. This great painting deserves a masterpiece of a cabinet to match.

More Exhibition Filing

A long and slow day yesterday, filed just 2 years of competitions and exhibitions and events. The going was slow partly due to the need to merge things... Today I've completed the job by filing 6 years worth; but this is partly because this and last year have had almost no events.

How odd the whole 'open art' exhibition and competition scene is. Now that everything is in one file, all 615 competitions, exhibitions and events since 2007, I can see things a little more clearly. I had one painting selected for the Discerning Eye in 2016 and 2017, but not 2018, 2019, where I entered quite a lot weird and powerful work, or 2013 when I entered Song of Amorophobia. I think the complex/sculpted frames might put them off, but it's impossible to tell. I know how much luck is involved in judging art (alas, yes, luck).

Song of Amorophobia may have been counted as too large. It is a tiny painting, but has metal tubes dangling from it. It's still one of my greatest paintings and best artworks. I can't really change myself to try and get selected, and besides the judges are different every year. Yet, I have so many paintings to choose from that choosing what to submit is always a challenge. Well, I will try again this year.

Exhibition Filing

Two really full days. Rose at 7am yesterday and worked with hardly a break until 8:30pm, slowly converting my 15 years of art exhibitions, competition entries, applications, and copying them to one master file. It's an exhausting process which continues today.

I'm currently at event/exhibition/competition number 600 and about halfway through 2017 (my first year was 2007).

This is important for a few reasons. I'm not the sort or artist who makes commercial work and sells it in one place. This file isn't like a stock manifest or accounts in a shop (although that is part of it), in a way this list is part of the art itself. It does store what artwork was where and when, which is useful to know, but it also lists every competition or application I've tried and with what, as well as how it all went, and things like photos from the events, rehearsals (the list covers live performances, and festivals for example). This information was all recorded somewhere, but generally in separate files on a year-by-year basis, which makes it harder to track down things, like the fate of one particular artwork. When it's all in one file, the tree of fate for every painting, story, poem... can be tracked, right back to 2007 - well, in theory.

It's taking an inordinate amount of time because I want to neaten and somehow unify things. The delivery dates for example should be called "Dropoff Date:" but there are lots of different dates, previews, prize events, closing events, selected and unselected collections, judgement dates, varnishing days. For old exhibitions this isn't that useful (is it at all useful?) but I think, if it is there, it needs to be correctly and neatly recorded, somehow part of the process of art itself. It's an odd obsession, but I think it will make doing these things more efficient in future. It will make it faster to track things down and track progression (hopefully there is progression). It also gives something of an 'overview' of events and institutions. Some, the the RBSA in Birmingham, or the Three Counties Open in Keele, I've been taking part in for years and I can see how and why and what the results, if any, were.

It is interesting to see everything I've tried and done, from stalls here and there, to talks, to live shows, to poetry and story competitions. Reminded of my cat painting shown in New York, the exhibition in the crumbling Liverpool asylum of Newsham Park, the coffee art project bizarreness, and the periods of growth and stings over the years.

Well, this will take me a few days, far longer than I had hoped. By the end, I may have 1000 new folders for information. Then I can start on the frames for the Discerning Eye paintings, the deadline is looming.