testing…
only god is perfect.
i cannot speak for any other belief system which this represents. only my own.
we cannot see the multitude of layers which make up the harmonies and balances of nature & it would be impossible for us to create an illusion which might depict them.
we are participants in these mysteries not spectators to them.
to devise a perfect simulacrum in two dimensions…
would – to me – be to deny the relationship with subject; the moment in time in which the thing is created.
crabs
crabs are great.
there are very few things that look as alien as a crab.
there is a provoking sense that there could be a face.
To insist that a storyteller stick to the facts is just as ridiculous as to demand a representative painter that he shows objects accurately.
HITCHCOCK TO TRUFFAULT (from ‘hitchcock’s secret diaries’ by dan aulier – his capitals. obviously.)
the search for perfection (left painfully ambiguous) seems to me to be the basis of the great failures in western art… particularly in painting.
for a crime to be perfect one need only ensure that one does not get caught.
maybe a photograph is the perfect painting.
only god is perfect.
i had a clever quote from Flaubert handy.
i looked at it and it seemed insulting, to Flaubert even.
in the general scheme of things.
it were about ‘perfection’: a concept i struggle to understand.
am reading a book about Sammuel Beckett. his relationship with painting; his attitudes and methods regarding the visual. this picture reminds me a little of Adrien Brouwer – one of Becketts’ favourite painters. he drew lots of gurning drunks.
i like him too.
something which is perfect is what? Cezanne said that only nature is perfect – maybe it is a religious word. it came up recently in conversations.
KING Now, Hamlet, where’s Polonius?
HAMLET At supper.
KING At supper? Where?
HAMLET Not where he eats, but where ‘a is eaten, A certain convocation of politic worms are e’en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service – two dishes, but to one table. That’s the end.”
From Hamlet, by William Shakespeare.
i mentioned before that a large part of my practice is stripping everything back. and that i occasionally arrive at nothing.
or perhaps more frequently than occasional.
so:
i am quite tempted to call them ‘three tape worms’ or ‘the three tape worms’. that ‘the’ gives it an almost sacred sense.
naturally they are done from imagination, though i am not sure where that leaves me as a figurative artist…
maybe this is not a piece of art.
returning to portraits (in time for the workshops starting again).
the harder i work the harder it is, the less i feel i am able to ‘see’. more & more i concentrate time into the drawings & try and keep the oils quick and light.
oil colour is the most beautiful and physical. but charged to a degree that i am careful how i use it.
these bears are taking a hell of a long time to finish.
the studio is too cold and damp for them to dry. seeing as how they are made of mulched paper (with pvc) & oil paint.
this is – almost – how it should be presented.
but it needs painting.
this the last post i will make on this subject until it is completely finished, both of them.
Exit, pursued by a bear”
stage direction, William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale.
the only bit of ‘the winter’s tale’ which made any sense. it made me laugh.
bears as entertainment.
o 