a cathartic waffle

ready to explode and need to release some air.

I used to think painting was cathartic. The romanace of the act appealed to me. That chance to find some temporary release from the seeming chaos of the everyday. i think that where my work suffered, beleiving that if I got lost in a dreamy release like state what would come out would be some inspired work of art. Truth is what comes out is a self indulgent, nonsensicle splurge. It worked in terms of the phycolgoy of escape, but I have no interest in painting singuarly as a mode to provide a release valve. So what ever it theraputic benefits the product was lost and pointless. A few analogies spring to mind- the releasing of pressure in a ballon, vomitting or masturbation. It was akin to all of those things. i shall leave you to make of it what you will.

Andys description of Rothko still sticks in my head. Saying how his method was more like an assasination than a crime of passion. Thats brilliant and perceptive. (sorry, ill remove my hand from your crutch Andy)

So with painting having more of an implicit function than a pretensious release of pressure I thought I might use this blog to fulfill that void. I dont intend coming on here every night and abusing webspace just in order to clam myself down, but tonight I shall. :)

I have go tback into obsessive list making, it has to stop. I write a list and then in five minutes its being transferred to a new updated versions. Lists of lists of lists. Its the kind of viscious circle which resemble sa map to nowhere and back again.

My frustration has been with time. At the moment I feel I have so much to do, too much to do that I am not getting anything done well as i try and do it all. The lists are an attempt to order everything, to fit everything in.. .but instead, and with that old foe irony, they eat up more time. Am i getting old or does twenty four hours run faster than it used to? Maybe its just Autumn teasing me.

(He played the song they had never seen
and all the Autumn leaves turned green)

I have a series of paintings on the go but dont feel i am dedicating enough time to push them where they need to go. I also feel that I need to be formulating new processes to come up with ideas and conceptions. I am worried that the process in which I develop ideas is getting stale. Drawing, photoshop, research, gallery visits, ohp's, life drawing- all of these are things which could help reestablish something more organic and less literal. Yet where do I find the time. Do you ever feel frustrated that time is being constantly lost and that you could be using it so much more constructibely?

Writting these lectures up is taking longer than I thought. On and off I have taken over a week to get the first one done, and its not even finished yet. Let alone be able to add pictures etc.

I am thnking I might work on paper for a bit, but treat it as I would a canvas. By that I mean treat it as a complete piece not a sketch.

I now have no idea what I came on here to write. it had a direction and a purpose in my head to start with. Now it has turned out to be nothing more than one of those paintings I used to make. A splurge.


On a random point- Andy- really glad oyu like Icarus. I hope I can capture its simplicity in some other works. Currently trying to finalise the composition and approach for Marsyas and Danae III and possibly IV. Both are going very close to abstraction in formal terms but hopefully towards a more sophisiticated form of representation in other terms. In that kind of Brian Graham and Howard Hodgkin kind of way.

Andy- good news on the Orwell work. Mr Orwells son likes it. He said to congratulate you.