AI Art Is Weird, Sad, and Ugly. Let’s Not Pretend Otherwise: link to an article by NIcholas Liu in Jacobin.

 *

AI Art

https://jacobin.com/2025/12/ai-slop-art-aesthetics-technology-capital/?fbclid=IwY2xjawOk3gBleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETFzOXhhVktiQ0Nqd3o0MUxMc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHkNsDGXXEPm7zvd8pgwbLuwf2zifdbLJM2pxLz0zsaXzUn54_qqrN41xHIyU_aem_yV3p2uqDyUewnMgHZjMBNA&brid=W8EQ5-wkCM3-lmiCQRUD5w

I suspect the article would be better if it avoided the Marxist theorising, which does not add much to the critique of AI.

But a pushback against AI is very necessary: necessary as part of a pushback against sterility. 

This becomes very obvious when travelling, and one encounters similarity in places which used to be quite different from each other,

*

Travel Wish list 2025

 

*

One of the nicest things is to look out a window at a new view...

The globe

Travel Wish list 2025

Fingers crossed and 2026 might allow for more wanderings.

This is my updated travel wish list: it hadn`t been updated since 2020.

I`ve scored off a few, and added others. 

My logic, more or less, is to prioritize places that are good for painting across the year, and ideally not expensive. That means a lot of Europe is best avoided. There is also Brexit, or "Brex-shit" as it might better be termed, which prevents lengthy periods in Europe without visa hassles.

As I am now in the UK, South America is a lot more expensive to get to. And I did visit almost all of the South American places on the 2020 list.

Moreover, now Asia is closer and cheaper.

*

R= revisiting

Spain R

Cádiz R

Seville R

Valencia

Granada R

Jerez de la Frontera 

UK R

Portmeirion - the cost of even the simplest hotel in the UK is so high (especially considering he tiny fusty pit you`ll receive for your money) that the chances of my crossing the UK to visit this curious place soon are low

Finland

I suspect this is a very unfriendly country and that puts me off enormously. Orderly, costly and not much fun. I fear the same for Sweden

Sweden

Norway R

USA R

I dread being harassed by the USA`s border security, who were gratuitously obnoxious in New York a few years ago. It could well be worse now. Ergo: on hold

Paterson, New Jersey

Northern California - Redwood trees. Sierra Nevada. Need I say more?

Montana

New York R - always seems to surprise me

Nevada - This and the next two are here because they have such bizarre landscapes

Arizona

New Mexico

Italy R

Rome R - I love this city and want to paint more bridges along the river

Turin R -I regret not really seeing it properly when I went twenty-five years ago

Ferrara -This and below are here because of de Chirico

Mantua

Palermo - baroque architecture

Mexico 

 Oaxaca - both seem to be interesting, though crime is a bit of an issue for the plein air painter

Mexico City

Turkey R

Antalya- These may be a good  autumn /end of the year option 

Fethiye 

 

Japan 

France R

Paris R 

Bordeaux

Brittany

Nimes

Lyons

Marseille- this is one of the few French places whose reputation suggests some sort of vitality. I suspect the others of being enervated, sterilised, joyless.

Switzerland R

Mountains

Bern

Zurich

The expense of Europe is very off-putting. Nonetheless, the idea of spending a concentrated three weeks in the Alps painting is very appealing. I want to visit Kunsthaus, Zurich. Also, I want to look at more of Bocklin, Hodller- which is largely in Basel, while Klee has he Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern.

Armenia

I have a romantic idea about this place But the reality, so informed by conflict, might be somewhat exhausting.

Nepal

This is a follow-on from India this year. It`s cheap, often beautiful and visually exciting. Why not?

India R 

Mussoorie R -  I`d happily revisit for about ten days

Udaipur R - a very agreeable place to revisit for a week or two 

Pushkar -  I could do a week or two here again though it`s less interesting than Udaipur. 

Kerala - Both see pleasant and cheap and, apparently, not as filthy as the north of India

Goa  - like Kerala, also probably very touristy, but perhaps that is ok for a few weeks?

Puducherry /Pondicherry - it might be a bit polished but so what?

* 

 

Going home

*

This was written a year and a half ago and, for some reason, not published.

"Goodbye Florianopolis"

I'm going home. I've done it here. 

I have to do something with my possessions and sell my flat and get a ticket home.

It wasn't one decision. It was a more like a series of conclusions about each single element within my life.

 Like, how interesting is it, really, to continue painting in Brazil? To live on the island? To converse with people here? Does it make me feel alive, excited? 

Can I renew my engagement with making things here? Painting? I felt I could renew my engagement, by investing more, but the returns have  been diminishing over the last few years. By investing I mean, changing medium, trying to visit new places and view things from different perspectives, pushing oneself to make more effort, to take risks.

 So it's connected to how I feel about creativity. The excitement I feel about making stuff is partly generated from how its received in a community. I don't find that here. It just isn't an inspiring art environment. It lacks an essential element- lively critical debate. I miss the greater critical sophistication of British society. 

Actually, I miss British people in general. They're amusing and often erudite. Their towns are sometimes very beautiful and there is a general consensus on what is correct and what makes sense and that's a consensus that suits me.

I enjoyed travel in Latin America: but my dulled mood is also connected with feeling that I have visited much of Latin America that I want to. I could go on travelling here, but I'm not passionate, not intrigued. 

And the people I know here are always some distance off. They are ok but I don't really belong with them. It's like a bunch of people you meet in a railway compartment. You bond because of an impossibly long delay. But you are bonded by circumstances, not by culture or blood. I could never shake a sense of the arbitrariness of my personal connections here.

That is how I feel and it feels like I should go home.

I began to feel this some years back but I also thought that moving back would be a mistake because I was worried about what I'd do for money. But I don't feel afraid about this now. I'm not sure why, but I just don't. I think it will be ok moving back. 

Goodbye Florianopolis. Goodbye Brazil.  It has been almost 20 years. Thanks. You gave me a lot and you were kind to me, but I need to go now. 

*

The soles of my shoes

*

Gymshoes

The Soles of my Shoes

You and me have seen everything to see

From Bangkok to Calgary

And the soles of our shoes are all worn down

The time to sleep is now*

These plimsols were bought in Arequipa, Peru, two years ago. 

I needed some shoes because my boots had gotten completely sodden in the mountains, and would need some days to dry properly.

Shopping in Peru has a specific aspect, in that instead of a variety of shops in a neighbourhood shops of the same type will dominate totally a particular street, or even a network of streets. So, in Arequipa there are streets which contain only shoe shops and  there are dozens of them while other streets consist entirely of ranks of oculists or stationers, and so forth. Obviously this is helpful if you have only one type of purchase to make, because then you can compare many different shops. But if you have a range of things you won't find them in one neighborhood- you`ll have to cross the entire city because each type of shop bunches up with its fellows.

This particular street truly had a huge collection of shoe shops, so many, indeed, that it was quite impossible to imagine how any could possibly turn a profit, especially as the stock sold seemed identical in each, and each store was as much of a jumble as the last. 

I selected, randomly, one shop- a salesgirl, wearing an expression of extreme boredom, found it possible to rise from her stool and locate my size in the chaos of the store. I tried them on and  have found them to be very satisfactory, despite their not having arch support.

I like very much the way it says "Aster", which means "star" in Greek, and I like how the tread has that geometric design like so many Union Jacks within circles. I guess these shoes are a homage to British sport, probably badminton or tennis in the 20s, and there is a definite  air of innocence about them.

I suppose looking at these shoes has a melancholy aspect related to time passing and things wearing down, the sole's condition being a measure of passage. However, despite a couple of years use they have worn down very little, though the uppers are now faded.

I often felt, when travelling, that I was traipsing, a vagabond. I went to paint pictures. I took paints and carriers and brushes and easels. I often went to Peru but also to the USA and North Africa. About 20% the paintings were good. That means of course that many were poor. Failure is essential to success in art as in sport, but it's dispiriting nonetheless. 

And often the experience was quite isolating. By your fifties you are going to be quite alone in these experiences. You have to be secure in yourself because the market in paintings is minuscule and there really isn't that much interest in what artists are doing, though I've exhibited and sold enough to at least pay for trips and paints.  Nowadays you are never far from a friend online, but it is still good to have a book, preferably nothing too heavy to lose yourself in. The Engish language bookstores in non-English speaking countries often have quite odd selections of books available and it`s fun to read authors that I`d otherwise pass by - Victorians or popular crime fiction, say. 

 I stayed in Chile for a month in January 2021, in a magical place of volcanos and lakes, immense virgin forests, and then troubled cities where every historic building, every public sculpture, every shop front, pavement, street sign, or flower bed had been vandalised in the name of human rights, covered with posters or spray painted slogans and the universal cliches of agitprop. I started to feel myself sinking.    

I felt that alienation in a few places: Bolivia too, and less visited parts of Peru. But I never felt it in New York maybe because of the hubbub and how the Met offers a spiritual refuge especially if you like 19th century art, and the people about you are such that they understand and accept people as individual, and self constructed.

Truly, behind the goal of painting landscapes,  I was in search of something  to lend life a goal when I wasn't sure it had any. When you travel in a certain backpacker-bum style you can sit in a broken  hostel room here or there and think why am I here because you are trying to exist outside the context needed for your life to have meaning. This might be romantic and interesting but it is also quite disturbing, and unless you have mental disciplines, to deal with this you will suffer. You must eschew alcohol and maintain a timetable and not slob around in your mind or in the place you find yourself.

*

I'll say that the pandemic forced me,  by grounding me, to settle. Unconscious forces acted on me and I found myself one afternoon tidying things away, boxing them and throwing out stuff and an invisible hand directed me to start looking for and eventually buy property too, and move there, in the process discarding two tables, a fridge, a cupboard and piles of old or unwanted clothing.

 Men came to the new apartment  to replace skirting boards, mosquito screens and taps. I commissioned a huge worktable from an obese Argentinian carpenter and arranged my books and got a kettle which lights up blue when it's heating water.  Then came pans and even, for my first time ever, a television, one with a giant screen. I bought and cultivated house plants. I bought floor carpets, new pillows, a standard lamp, a table lamp and re-upholstered chairs and sofas. I bought two carved wooden bowls. I bought t-shirts, shirts, socks, shorts, towels, soaps, shampoos, razors. I bought fish in tins and cucumbers in jars and dried beans in white and red and black and canned peaches

I bought a new computer and thought about another computer. I looked at the cracked screen of my cel and thought of replacing it too.

Often this process has been enjoyable, though with furniture there is a lack of variety in styles available.  Almost everything here in Florianopolis is fairly new,  and the second hand market is just junky kitchen units and corpulent sofafas made of shiny vinyl, like those in pornographic films. The new stuff sold here can be ok, a sort of twentieth century modern,  roughly Scandinavian in mental set: not a style that I find easy to love passionately, as it`s just a bit bland. But it's not bad as a base. I do think the stuff I really like is not suited to modern apartments, being too delicate somehow: I like Danish or English neo-classical.

This process is already winding down, though I might paint a big wall not because it needs it but because it might somehow mean that I have occupied it and it would become more mine. I might paint it green.

I wonder what I might do when this phase of home-creation ends, when the pandemic ends and the world re-awakens, and if with it I'll be launched again into the necessity of travel.

The travelling phase was a response to the emptiness I felt hanging about, the extraordinary boringness of ordinary settled life,  which I've felt since I was about ten years of age. That detestable lack of romance in daily life, undoubtedly a sensation exacerbated by close friendships with Tintin and Biggles and some idea of adventurousness that floated in the Scottish air (I'm not sure if it is still felt?). And how settlement seemed, at least where I grew up in suburban Aberdeen, to necessitate abnegation and a superhuman tolerance for tedium.

The sense of asphyxiation that seems so integral to the settlement process will most likely drive me back to make some trips, however alienating they might be.

 All that was written two years ago- and now I`m off in a few weeks to Colombia, then Ecuador and if I can take this laptop and teach a bit along the way, and if I successfully sublet my place, perhaps can sustain economically a few months on the road

*

Lyrics from "I will follow you into the dark", by Death Cab for Cutie

*

Thanks to Astoria Writers' Group for feedback, 18 April, 2021 and Walton Writers 6 May, 2021

*

Places to visit; rationale

*

The world

This is my updated travel wish list.  I`ve scored off a few, and added others. 

Rationale

My logic, more or less, is to prioritize places that are good for painting in Europe or Latin America. 

I want sunshine but not so much heat that going out is impossible much of the day.  I like to continue exploring places I`ve been to before, adding to existing painting series. Thus, for example, I will return to Peru and Chile. Or perhaps I feel my paintings from previous trips weren't good enough. I also like revisiting because I`m curious to see if places are as I remember them and if they evoke some meaningful emotion. I`m surprised how rarely I discover this to be the case. 

There are places I go to because I feel I ought to, usually because they are noted for art collections or their architecture. It often seems that such esteemed places aren`t that fun to hang around in, or that they are costly or take themselves very seriously. I think I prefer to hang around obscure little towns in Peru to loitering in Paris. People seem to be a bit more fun and pleasant in such places. 

I've found travelling in Arab countries to be severely spoiled by harassment, which reaches the level of bullying, and although the towns and monuments are often visually striking this doesn't compensate for the discomfort I often felt in Arabic parts of Morocco or Egypt. The Berber and Nubian areas were notably more agreeable.  Ergo, there are no Arab dominated countries on this list.

I love nature and as I get older it gets more and more priority over culture. I try to visit a variety of landscapes across the year. 

Cost is also an issue. Being a guest is free, but necessitates submitting to, often unclear expectations. Usually, I damage something in my host`s house and there is some embarrassment about how I needn`t pay for it. A gift is essential- but what, exactly?

Another consideration is age. I'm 51 and I guess I've about another twenty years of easy mobility. I have to prioritise: I'd prefer a more thorough knowledge of a little than superficial familiarity with a lot. 

Hotels in northern Europe are costly and often joyless. In southern Europe there are better prospects. There is AIRBNB too, but that can be weird, an uneasy zone between being a guest and a tenant. And some AIRBNB places are downright weird. But Latin America is still affordable, and is where I am, and thus I favour it. India and Southeast Asia might also appear but they are so far that the air fare becomes high.

*

R= revisit

Spain R

Cádiz
Seville
Valencia
Granada
Cordoba -NEW


UK R

West Coast of Scotland and the Western Isles R  - too much rain 
Galashiels - ditto too much rain 
Hawick  too much rain 
Selkirk  too much rain 
New Forest R
North Wales R - also a lot of rain. Might be removed
Portmeiron


Finland

Sweden

Norway R

USA

Paterson, New Jersey
Chicago -I went and didn't like it that much
Northern California
Montana
Idaho- I have a feeling it might be quite weird.
New York R- always seems to surprise me
Washington State - lost interest completely
Nevada -  NEW - This and the next two are here because they have such bizarre landscapes.

Arizona- NEW
New Mexico- NEW


Italy R

Rome R - I want to paint more bridges along the river
Turin R. -I regret not really seeing it properly when I went twenty years ago
Milan R
Ferrara -This and below are here because of de Chirico
Mantua

Brazil R 

Rio R
Rio Grande de Sul R - Especially the wine region to the north R

Mexico NEW

Mexico City and much more- I think here must be very visually striking. More research due.

Ecuador

Chile R

Patagonia -  this is a good January destination
Atacama desert

Peru R- There are quite a few corners left to explore

Bolivia R - I didn't really this place justice before

Turkey R

Istanbul R

Poland R

Masuria

Japan 

France R

Paris R 
Bordeaux
Brittany
Nimes
Lyons
Marseille - NEW

Switzerland R-  Mountains. The expense of this country, and much of Europe is very off-putting. Latin America is preferable just for this reason.

Armenia - NEW -  I have a romantic idea about this place

*

Packing for Araucania

*

Medium sized case, carriers

Travelling to Araucania

I`m trying to keep weight and nuisance down. 

 I calculate that I can take 32 card pieces to paint on, in the very unlikely event that all the 32 painting sessions that my four weeks in Chile allows are successful.

 I carry these in 4 carriers. The problem with using oil paints is they need at least three days to dry. That's one reason for not staying anywhere for less than a week-  to allow any pictures the time they need to dry before packing between different painting spots. I have thought about using acrylics but I find them nasty in colour and finish.

As things stand, I`m painting in three places: Villaricca, Pucon and Melipueco, though I  I shall perhaps wander down to Puerto Montt for the last few days in Araucania.

The paints and so on fit into this case, along with various other bits and pieces. It`s tight but it`s just about ok. The larger case is cumbersome. 

My trip isn't until after Christmas, but I like to plan things in advance and do things in a good time, unhurriedly. The Brazilian way of doing everything last minute appalls me.

*

Spain, National parks, Constantina

*

Southern Spain

The idea is to go to one of these Spanish National Parks in September (Anjudar, Hornachuelos), thus breaking up a Scottish trip with guaranteed good landscape painting.

Probably the best thing is to fly to Seville or Malaga, find a way to one of these parks and a place to stay, do some painting, then proceed to Aberdeen. Then return to Brazil via Spain. That keeps the flying time down.

Perhaps going to Seville then to Hornachuelos is the easier option.

Constantina seems promising, nestled in the mountains.

*

British Trip, 2019 - Glasgow, travel and painting

*

Paintings from Glasgow

 A bridge over the River Kelvin, oil on card, c. 28 x 24 cm unavailable

Trees, River Kelvin, Glasgow

 oil on card, c. 19 x 17 cm    SOLD

This, above, was photographed in its carrier and you can perhaps make out the pegs holding it in place/

 A synagogue, Glasgow, oil on card, c. 18 x 22 cm  aVAILABLE

My  last picture was painted from the south side, specifically Cook Street, on a brilliantly sunny day.

Warehouse, Cook street, oil on card, c. 24 x  29 cm - unavailable

My time painting in Glasgow was hampered by rain- a real pity as I would have enjoyed having had more time to explore this strange city, so full of absences,  in painting. Ergo, I spent my time in Art Galleries and wandering around. I shall post some photos of these visits later. 

But all the trips are incomplete, necessarly so, every place having an infinity of facets and my own subjectivities varying besides. For this reason I have been exploring fewer and fewer completely new places, instead revisiting to add to existing explorations. 

In the context of such thoughts, I question the upcoming Ecuador trip, wondering if it might be wiser to go back to Peru to revisit previous locations. There is an additional argument for revisiting, which is that a large part of what is stressful about travel revolves around basic matters such as finding hotels, orientating oneself and suchlike, and these travails are lessened.

 I am a rotten traveler and dislike much of the experience. But I`d rather travel than stagnate artistically or in character .

Please note that as these pictures are in Scotland, and I forgot to measure them, I have only approximate sizes for them. The margin of error is low, however..

*

Pochade carrier with double pochade

*

Carrier with double pochade

Two pieces of card support are lightly joined at the back to double. This doubles the surface area. These are clipped into place in a carrier so they can be painted. After the work is finished the two pieces will be separated and each carried home each in its own carrier so they don`t get damaged. They will be joined again later when dry.

If this experiment works I am on to creating much larger pictures when travelling. This will allow for more dramatic effects, variations in scale, tonality and gesture that at the moment are hard to achieve.

The main question is how well the carrier will sit on the paint box and easel set-up. But for every problem there is a solution, surely.

*

Explorations: BRDE exhibition notes

*

Explorations

Here are some notes about the works on display at the BRDE show: a sort of introduction and maybe also some memories about what happened along the while I was making these pictures.

About me.

I grew up in Aberdeen, a provincial city in north-east Scotland, notable for stern and taciturn and decent granite buildings, where the people are stern and taciturn and decent too. There are also two beautiful rivers which lead you into the glory of the Scottish countryside. I used to cycle along the Dee in the evenings to escape effects of the tedium of school and smoke cigarettes and try to feel free. I also used to paint pictures though I never thought to combine the two activities.

I haven't changed much except now I live in a messy and not very stern Latin American city and travel by car, a silver Celta called HAY. HAY is my best friend and I love her and we have been all the way down to Uruguay but mainly we wander round Santa Catarina especially the fabulous mountain towns where you get this divine sense of lostness among the Araucarias.

Travelling and painting

Travelling and painting is basically the best sort of travelling you can do. You get to use a kit which consists of a box containing your paints and brushes and which you then mount on tripod to function also as an easel. The possibilities contained within the kit are infinite and glorious and it is your fault solely and entirely if you return home after a longish trip with a pile of rubbish paintings as messing about with them later never works. That responsibility focusses the mind.

I paint using oils which take a few days to dry so I carry them around in cardboard containers which I make specially.

Then you walk around looking for stuff that strikes you and, so long as the sun is shining you are fairly likely to find something. Then you set to work.

Peru

The pictures here are a selection of those made from three trips in 2016, 2017 and 2018. Peru is a country that has very distinct regions and I spent most of most of my trips in the Andes- I avoided spending too long on the coastal cities because of the heat. I spent time in Ayacucho, Cajabamba, Cajamarca, Pacucha, Cusco and Tarma. There are also works from Lima, a place extraordinarily rich in architecture- albeit often dilapidated- Arquipa, Trujillo and Puno.

Peru is quite weird but rather good. The woman of Peru are finely dressed with excellent hats. Dentistry is rare. It`s cheap, quite pretty and the food is awful but the people leave you in peace even if the dogs don't. In fact, the Peuvians are mostly quite shy and courteous and sometimes were kind in bringing me things. Their children do not throw stones at you like Arab children nor attempt steal your stuff like the London brats. In Brazil people are mostly courteous too but not as shy, but still they don't bug you too much. If you have traveled and painted in Arab countries you will know that not being bugged is something to be very grateful for as Arabs harry you mercilessly.

All this matters because if you are painting you want to concentrate and if some idiot stands next to you repeating over and over -as one twerp did in Tijucas, what are you doing? - it is apt to damage your concentration.

Santa Catarina

As I live in Florianopolis the pictures here was based on explorations of the island and primarily the neighbouring regions. The good thing about Santa Catarina is that it has a huge variety of landscapes within a fairly small area and the locals aren`t as inclined to criminality as in other parts of Brazil. Also, it has a good span of different cultures, though architecturally it is quite barren. I get a bit fed up on the island and make regular trips usually to Urubici, Alfredo Wagner, Mafra and other mountain destinations. I did other trips down to Criciuma, to Orleons and way over to the west to Sao Miguel and places in between. I went to Anitapolis and to Araranguá also to Urussanga. It`s not a big state but it`s big enough to allow years and years of exploration.

The Pictures on display

The pictures are a selection to show the range of styles I worked in but it favours most the last Peruvian trip and the most recent Santa Catarina trips. The pictures are not painted slowly but only a few pictures survive. Most pictures I did are like burnt pancakes or horses you bet on and which nearly win but in fact lose, and thus engender a sort of disgust and you would rather not be reminded of them. Hence, they eventually find their way to the scrapheap. That is the way with plein air painting. It is at times agonizing but when it goes right it is very sweet though somehow it doesn't feel like it was because of you but because the hand of the Great Architect somehow pushed things your way for once.

So you only feel it`s you when you lose and never when you win. I don`t know why that is.

Five pictures

All the pictures are very much of the hour. They aren't classical at all. I don't lay much claim to objectivity, nor to harmony and balance or the legacy of Poussin though I know he is magnificent. I`m pretty much a product of the northern subjectivist schools especially van Gogh and Munch, though I love Bonnard and Corot too.

All the pictures are glazed because I wanted to protect them from dust. The oil surface picks up dust quite readily but the glazing does mean you lose some immediacy. I framed the pictures simply and fairly uniformly for the show, but certain pictures might be better re framed for certain contexts such as white walls.

Now, let`s look at five pictures...


1.

Sao Jose, looking across wasteland, oil on card, 13.5 x 11.5 cm

I liked the way the rise up flattened to road into a curve. I like the way the place was basically a dump, they were waging a  war against the environment-, the shamelessness of it all seemed worth recording. The world flattened out makes me think of Mantegna .

2.

The mountains near Cajabamba, oil on card, 17.2 x 15 cm

This is from a place called Cajabamba which is small and fairly lost. I liked the Cezanne-ness of working there, the way the soft air lent such distance to the perspective and how melancholy it all was. I`d like to go back, there are big pigs on the lanes though there is no decent coffee even in the town centre. Milk is not popular either. The hills around are very soft yet exaggerated and have therefore a oddly mysterious quality as if offering endless places for one to hide.

3.

Tijucas, kite flying, 16 x 18 cm   SOLD

Sometimes you just get this sense of people or places that have just been abandoned or forgotten here at times, Europeans just sort of dumped. Or left to their own devices.

4.

Guardo do Embau, with hills in the distance, oil on card, 18 x 22 cm

This painting is available on Saacchi Art

So much of my work has a troubled mind as its emotional genesis but here I wanted to make art which is explicitly about happiness about simplicity.. It`s an easy place to be happy in especially if all you want to do with your life is smoke pot and sunbathe.

5.

Ayacucho, a view of some lots, oil on card, 18 x 16.5 cm

This was painted from the just down from the big square. Ayacucho is a pretty fine painting city except for the dogs. Too many: I saw six them attack a schoolgirl and  this guy and I had to rescue her. She was traumatized and returned home weeping. Anyway, the painting has those rigid geometries that seem to be the norm in Peruvian towns, with the whole place a grid extending with deviations from the central square. But that, from a painters perspective can lend visual sterility, especially in flat place. But Ayacucho has some fine hills, and this is one shows the lots to the north of the town. This picture has echos of Bonnard, I think.

That's it.

When I began to make these small paintings - and indeed they were very small, about half the size of postcards - they were somewhat under the influence of Symbolist photography. They were consequently very tight and a little sad and gray, they failed to reflect the bright colors of sunny Brazil. I think I translated the cold tones of northern Europe with my contained palette and was unconsciously trying to impose nature on them here.

It took me about three years to get the work in order - at least in terms of the overall aesthetic method - by developing critical notions of what "good" or "bad" could mean as a reference to my work, and developing the technical fluency to achieve that goal.

*