Valencia: flat 2

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Valencia: flat 2, oil on card, 20.1 x 21.6 cm - available

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Valencia: flat 1

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Valencia: flat 1, oil on card, 22.3 x 21.7 cm - available

This flat had some sort of nastiness in it so we were always suffering from faint maladies Sick building syndrome.

My sleep

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Bed

This is from my old place. I had been sleeping in this room for exactly a year

The room is like a cell. I strongly sense how arbitrary it is that I'm here rather than any other room.* 

In fact, since I left my parents house over thirty years ago, I have felt this about where I live: the immense arbitrariness of where I am. Leaving home can be an exile or an escape, or just what you must do as a mature person. But home, by definition, is necessarily a place that can't feel arbitrary. 

I believe these feelings of rootlessness are common among the children of immigrants. Their parents made a choice to move. But the children they have in the new country are neither truly of the new country nor of the country of their parents. The children feel detached from the country they are growing up in, but are not really part of the countries of their parents either. They're in a cultural limbo. Sometimes such children are referred to as Two Culture Kids. They are often the offspring of military or missionary families.

 I think I unconsciously chose the role of landscape painter because that way I could examine and insist on, my presence in the world. 

My Sleep

I wanted to write about my sleep, about what might be going on there, because I haven't had a dream for a long time, not for years, and i guess that might be interpreted as the death or the dying of my unconscious mind. Perhaps, you might argue, I've evolved into this super- conscient being, whose mental workings have no mystery. But the decisions i daily  make or fail to make suggest you would be wrong.

I also wanted to tell you about my bed, but then I started to think about how it would be to see a photograph of myself sleeping and how creepy that would be. To see myself lying asleep would be to see someone vulnerable to attack, their body unwilled, corpse like. Part of what makes that thought appalling is, I confess, that it has a glassy appeal as at times I do indeed wish I could rise out of my own being and see myself a corpse, spent through. That isn't a constant feeling, but can come when life seems wretched. But such trains of thought should be controlled as they may lead to rather unconstructive attitudes to life's problems 

One thing about sleep although its a physical necessity, you can't force it, it has to be voluntary.  The are are two of you, one that declares its bed time. He has to make it as easy for the other part  of you, a younger part, wilful and strange, to concede, to sleep. Sometimes the other part is very easy and goes to sleep. But if they aren't accepting you can't force it.

You choose where to lie, probably a strung or foam padding covered by a sheet of cotton, with one or two further items of raised padding to support your head called pillows.Then, there is a blanket or some sort of cover and you assume a position lying, covered by cloth. Ideally only you head or one arm pokes out of that envelopment.

You're in there, your head rests on the pillow, then you close your eyes and try to ease from your thoughts letting any conflictuous moments from the day float away, and you push away also any hopes or aspirations so you are humble, desire free, and your passage into sleep can proceed without rupture. 

If you think about a girl or some sexy thing then it is better if it is a memory of a successful encounter than a ambition, or you will become quite hopeless thinking about how you might contrive an apparently chance meeting outside the tube stop and where that encounter might lead.

But if that process, that embarkation is overlong and you are still waiting for sleep after a time it is better to return to the state of will and rise,  do ironing or arrange your postage stamp collection, some quiet monotonous task. Myself, have arranged all my bookshelves according to colour of book spine. 

The sleep I want is first  a dense, heavy, almost asphyxiating.  I want to be taken by a landscape by Poussin. I want serpentine paths passing giant oaks and a lazy fisherman sleeping, i want farl green forest and a stillness broken only by a wisp of smoke from a dying campfire.

  I want to be free of the need to make choices, to accept everything. I don't want to know that I might return, I want vastness, lostness , a place without or decision or shame.

This photo was taken about six months ago before I moved. 

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Sofa, cushion, coffee table, bowls and books

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Sofa, cushion, coffee table, bowls and books, oil on card, 15.3 x 17 cm

 

 

 

 

 

 

From just over a year ago, in the previous apartment;

 

Oddly, the paint still hasn't dried in places. 

 

 

 

 

 

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My bed

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Where I sleep

Sleep 

This is where I lie down and try to sleep. 

I don't like lying there trying to sleep. I don't like thinking about the day and watching thoughts accumulate. I don't like thinking about the day that was or the day to come and what it might mean. These thoughts so often bring anxieties. I just want to fall rapidly into unconsciousness, plunging into a soft abyss.

Recently, I've been waking up early in the mornings. Then, I  try to go back to sleep. Sometimes I manage. I don't want to get up very early because when I do I feel an emptiness.

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There is another photo of my bed that I'll publish another day. It's less classical.  I may do a series about sleep and going to bed. It's a massively unexplored subject, considering how much of our life is spent doing it.

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Window

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Window, oil on card, 14 x 15 cm  -unavailable

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One of the rooms in which I live

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A view into a bedroom showing a table and shelving,

oil on card, 13 x 17 cm -  -unavailable

I think an important aspect of Boice's approach is that one does not immediately act upon disappointment, which is so often -perhaps usually?- a corollary  to ones own creative efforts. One lets that disappointment sit and coagulate in the mind into a sort of resolution overnight.

An aspect of my approach is that it includes repetition. The idea is that one confronts monotony. The risk is that one creates it.

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Room, Trindade, with books, sofa and bag

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Room, Trindade, with books, sofa and bag

 oil on card, 17 x 15.5 cm

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My Peruvian Adventure- Tarma, Part One- the town

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Tarma, hills seen from the town, oil on card, 165 x 23 cm unavailable

 Tarma: carnival, oil on card, 22 x 15.3 cm   AVAILABLE

There`s a slightly sad atmosphere in this picture but then I think there is in the town, which has a slight provincial lostness about it.

Tarma, Hotel El Dorado, a bed with a chair behind it - sold

 oil on card, 14.5 x 17 cm

Tarma is a small, pleasant town, cradled in high mountains a few hours up from Lima. I very much enjoyed my stay there. My hotel was an old handsome place and very good value. 

My stay there, and my painting, was affected by the feeling that I was coming to the end of my trip and a certain languor accompanied me. I sought, unsuccessfully, to challenge this mood. Perhaps the three places I stayed in in the Andes were too similar, and I would have benefited from another, utterly different environment.

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Interior with flowers, a table and tea things

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Interior with flowers, a table and tea things, oil on card, 14.5 x 17 cm - avallable

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Two black and white paintings

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 My Living room, oil on card, 14 x 15.5 cm - unavailable

The room in which I do most of my stuff and sit around in is really two rooms which have been knocked together, an arch dividing them. If the arch sounds rather dated and seventies and dated, then perhaps it is, but does it has the pleasant compensatory effect of making me feel like an observer of the other space. 

  Things, oil on card, 10.5 x 12 cm

Some of the objects are- a camera, scissors, sardine tins (they sell tinned sardines in these lovely silvery tins. I have started to eat these sardines simply to accumulate the delightful tins. I have four), two small bottles one of Tabasco the other of correcting fluid, sunglasses, and a stapler.

I painted several versions of these pictures, destroying the weaker ones.

I like best when the visual vocabulary is very simple- a fat line and a thin, and little tonal range. A comparison might be with those pieces of Baroque music where instruments are paired to pursue a music structure whose simplicity allows their qualities to be contrasted.

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A week in Salvador, part 2: interiors

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A vase, oil on card, 12.5 x 13.5 cm

 Hall, oil on card, 15 x 17 cm unavailable

 Interior of Pierre`s apartment, oil on card, 18 x 14 cm   available

Interior with a sofa, oil on card, 18 x 15 cm   SOLD

Interior with a view to a bedroom, Salvador, oil on card,  15 x 14 cm - unavailable

Here are ten pochades painted in Pierre Pophillat`s beautiful apartments in Salvador, which he is restoring with considerable flair.

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Paintings from my flat

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 The green workroom, oil on card, 14.7 x 14.7 cm - available

the picture above  has some discolouration on the upper left corner

 Stuff on a table, oil on card, 12 x 14.5 cm

Pots on a stove, oil on card, 11.5 x 14 cm  SOLD

Four pictures from the my place: very much under eastern influences, and I hope they feel fresh and lively.


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A friend

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A friend, oil on card, 15 x 11 cm  -  available

A corner of my room. The flat has boxes of Ensorian items which I put in storage, in boxes. They were collected when I was painting still lives in gloomy London. The visual language I used for still life there was, naturally, an extension of that huge and yet most eccentric of North European capitals, a place where so much is hidden behind circumspection. Thus, I developed a style had antecedent in Fantin-Latour and and Ensor.

This didn't translate to this context- Brazil- but finally I`ve found a way, via the interior, to revisit the still life.

My place

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 Painting junk, oil on card, 9.3 x 12 cm unavailable

Where I sleep, oil on card, 12.5 x 13 cm  unavailable

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My place

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My place, oil on card 18 / 15.5 cm    AVAILABLE

My workroom

My workroom, oil on card , 9.7 x 12.5 cm

I work here: art things and teaching, and the things I need for the computer plus eating and watching films. Also dressing and listening to music. I don't have a tv.

I do not enormously like the room: it often feels messy because there are too many different functions in the same space.

I prefer to have my tasks and pleasures compartamentalised, so they do not corrupt each other, the money related things rnnng into the creative things and so forth, where everyhing becomes spoiled.

Five paintings from Malta

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The next few posts will feature paintings from a recent trip to Malta and Italy. All were painted plein air on a more or less one or two- a- day basis.

Five paintings from Malta, with coins for scale.

I had wished to post these images while travelling, but this prove difficult because the internet cafes often disable the USB connextions to their computers, making it impossible to download images.

Clearly, for future trips I shall have to consider taking along a little laptop- not something I'm keen on doing because of the additional weight and bother. 

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The trip began badly, I was down with flu much of the time, so I just managed a couple of interiors, and  views from the balcony of the flat in Marsaxlokk, including these:

Marsaxlokk, Interior, sofa haircut, oil on card, 14 x 10 cm - available

Marsaxlokk, Interior with woman with a "bowl" haircut, oil on card, 14 x 10 cm - discarded

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Tomorrow I shall post some pictures from Syracuse, Sicily.


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A chair and my white coat

A chair and my white coat, oil on card, 8.7 x 10.3 cm  SOLD

My living room, Florianópolis

My living room, Florianopolis, oil on card, 12 x 10.7 cm

One of a run of little interiors that I shall be doing. I suppose this could conceivably be No. 8 from the list created on Sunday 23 May.

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I'm off to a hotel in the country where they are running various art courses, including etching, which should be jolly. I hope the others there are pleasant. Anyway, I shall not be posting for a few days, therefore.