25.3.12 - 14.3.12

25.3.12 - delivered two pieces of artwork to the Art Lounge for their exhibition "Reflections".  The preview night is on
Thursday 29th March.

24.3.12 - spiky whiteness forming like hollow traction over scrambled words and a centre found nowhere.

23.3.12 - my last day of annual leave until the last tax year.  Lots of walking, talking and saw the Hunger Games - which despite starting off with lots of beautifully realized futuristic haircuts, costumes and cityscapes eventually became a film where people had a bit of a fight in a forest.  I tend to drift off a little during action sequences - especially my own.

22.3.12 - there's a nerve here that's getting harder to squeeze or change - something underlying and benign but also throbbing with blood, soot and words.

21.3.12 - when I was 3 or 4 years old I remember being in my first nursery class and being all quiet in the middle of lots of other children all playing with various toys.  I stared at the sun and felt like I was disappearing into it and everything blanked out into a strange nothing of bright light - this was broken by the ugly, old and evil (from my point of view) face of the lady in charge of the nursery.  Think this was the start of my shuffling off from one school to another for antisocial and weird quietness issues.  I've never stared at the sun since - perhaps that was a moment when I got brought permanently into some kind of reality which has since been very difficult to ignore.

20.3.12 - Pieces of collage torn off a very large canvas from way back in 2008... lots of old work can be mutilated and made into new work - working on canvas with collage and wallpaper paste appeals to me as it would mean I could start making work that doesn't need to be framed and also avoid filling up more and more dwindling space with big pictures I don't often sell.

19.3.12 - seen the photo above on the pavement on my way home for a few weeks now - fallen from someone's bag.  Finally picked it up what with it being such a regular floor item.  From a distance it always looked so idyllic - like a false memory of a replicant.  Close up it feels much more believable - the man looks less like a muscle man floating on an inflatable bed in the middle of the sea and now looks like someone's balding grandfather reading a paperback.

18.3.12 - Had a nasty argument with my younger brother though it was amicably resolved - the writing above was written before it was amicably resolved so it's very biased towards my point of view so thankfully I've drawn over it to make it less annoying.  Family is unusual but as usual paradoxically unusually usual.  Looked through old photo albums and people look distorted with the wrong haircuts and personality exposing a cheating memory.  Also when photos were taken on film you got what you were given - someone's eyes would be closed or body unposed creating an unnatural awkwardness - whilst now we have digital photos we can take image after image and be selective to the point of unrealistic perfection. 

17.3.12 - made a cheesy pastry type thing with broccoli and swede mash as a side dish.  Was quite pleased by the result.  Also went with my mum and younger brother to see The Woman in Black which had the same slow tedium as old Hammer Horror films, though I found this strangely comforting and allowed this to lull me into a state where the shocks and jumps towards the end and middle were actually quite shocky and jumpy.

16.3.12 - Caught the train to Doncaster to visit my mother for the weekend... it is Mother's Day after all... tried to draw the view out of the window of the train but the scenery passed before I could even remember it all so everything above is a
re-imagining interspersed with a reflection before gaudily coloured in with marker pens.

15.3.12 - A new gallery is being built on Dale Street in Manchester's northern quarter (see the newspaper article kindly given to me by a work colleague a few weeks ago) - got in touch with the owner through Adam from Piccadilly Records, El Social Diablo and Chump mag... had a look around the place today and it's a very big space and should make for a very interesting gallery - I'll more than likely be putting together a new installation within the gallery sometime this year.

14.3.12 - Last day at work before a long weekend off.  Disordered into fitting everything that needs to be done into an ordered disorder.  The above looking like a collection of junk shuffling around itself.  The above also looking like many other collages in this diary - this could be due to me printing out copies of every diary entry I'd done by the end of January which would be recollaged again into later diary entries... which is the nature of my life - reshuffling similar slices of repeated texture into something denser.  The routines of life can sometimes feel that way - everyday blends with every other day when you get into a routine - thankfully I have enough variation not to become one big grey slab of consistency.

Ruined garden path and other box contents.

I read somewhere that all the cells in our bodies and brains change and renew every seven years - so I am a completely different person to who I was at school, college or university and the only link between me and the past is memory... whether this is down to different circumstances of different periods of my life or that's it's an actual cellular change I'm unsure - but the past to me feels like it was a weird dopey and empty nothing where I was just making things up as I go along... though perhaps that also describes my present.

I tend to collect things, sometimes off the street and sometimes things that people give me... there inevitably comes a sorting period where I have to throw things out or decide to keep them - photos, letters and mementos that no longer feel relevant to my current cellular period tend to be put in a "memory box" so that I can make room for new dopey and empty nothings.  I had a moment a few weeks ago where I looked through my boxes and found these three photographs:

This was during my 2nd year of Uni where i used my landlords back garden to paint on a large sheet of canvas... the emulsion paint ran through the canvas and soaked into the concrete below and the effect looked better than anything that was actually on the canvas, though I had to try to clean it up before the landlord saw it - I sort of half managed to clean it up but there was a definite and obvious shade of pink and blue afterwards - it was just slightly blurry.  

My landlord at that point was a middle aged benefit cheat with a limp that changed sides when he was angry: Ted.  I actually did a lot of damage to Ted's property - but then Ted probably deserved it - he had very shifty eyes and was definitely up to something... the only reason I flooded the kitchen is because he refused to fix my blocked sink, until it was eventually too late and the tap filled the sink until water flooded over down the sides and ended up soaking the entire floor bringing down piles of plaster onto the kitchen below.  I suppose I shouldn't have been sick in the sink as I'm sure that didn't help the blockage - and neither did getting really drunk and passing out as the whole bedroom flooded around me - being woken up the morning after by Ted banging on my bedroom door.

University was wasted on me - if I was given a chance to go again I would likely take a proper subject in which I could get a job related to afterwards as I learnt nothing new about art... I suppose it gave me the opportunity to be unemployed and have lots more time to make art - though I feel this was wasted on me too - but I did develop some of my ideas during this period - some of them bad ideas where I got obsessed with circles in my third year and then carried on this obsession for a good year and a half after finishing uni... did this give me some knowledge on geometry, shape and composition?  

Long swathes of my time are wasted I feel on repeating the same ideas over and over until I get them right... now I sometimes feel that a lot of my artwork is very similar and getting a little bit stylised and that I should perhaps get into a new medium.  Though the collage project that I'm embroiled on hasn't reached it's definitive conclusion - perhaps the potential conclusion is an illusion and my ideas don't conclude into a perfect horizon point - it just splatters into a wall and dribbles downwards drying into reams of paper as it gets sorted into different categories of pointlessness to be recycled into fresh gleamings of hope.  Either way I'll find out soon and be sure to post everything I do and think publicly on this blog - I do that quite a lot these days.

13.3.12 - 8.3.12

13.3.12 - My job tends to involve stacks of forms and other people's measure of patience - when I get home I like to immerse myself into my own routines and patterns and get the same things done over and over again - building on top of the same achievements until they spread into all encompassing sores and sinking their accumulating weight into the mud of nothing much at all... when it's recovered by alien archaeologists in hundreds of years it'll all have just broken apart into tiny bits of mushy paper and be a useless empty unremarked testament to a long and pointless struggle.
So I think I should start making things a little more durable.

12.3.12 - Flailing arms from a sensitive spinal column linked together with blood and dark pylons of burnt paper.   

11.3.12 - Watched Wall-E.  Which was a much better film than the Fountain.  I am quite biased towards anything with robots in though.  If The Fountain had a least one robot in it would have been better - like Rocky 4.

10.3.12 - of colour system of unwilling recognition bricks.

9.3.12 - watched The Fountain - which is a film I've wanted to watch for a few years despite not knowing anything about - I just like the front cover and thought it likely to be deep and exciting.  The whole thing was rather disappointing and ended up being long winded, messy and boring... didn't like the Buddhist overtones of the ending either.  I had the idea in my head and from the front cover that The Fountain was a science fiction film - but it had nothing remotely science fiction in it aside from the occasional experiment with tree bark.

8.3.12 - An issue in having a collection of 2nd hand patterned blazers is that the buttons are usually hanging by a literal thread - thankfully I have a sewing kit kept in a old biscuit tin which is full of spare buttons and threads... I found lots of buttons, electrical parts and also a photo of a man in spectacles with a little boy - all in an old box  outside the next door neighbours house back when I lived in Withington - this was found in 2007 - the past is relevant to the future.

See if you can find this button on the above collage - it's actually very easy.

Inevitable decline into tighter diagrams of self or ascension into a non-typical me (cheat death?)

Some new artwork part derived from zoomed in print outs of part of this picture. 

 

I'm hoping to develop my images more and more in the direction of an organised yet seeming disorganised assemblage of living sensations - like twinges of tiny pain in the internal organs that happen suddenly and with no explanation only to vanish until they reoccur a few weeks later... the whole unpredictable and unknowing throb of infections, slow dislocation and probable failure at the very end: when our frames together break apart and we all tumble down into death and pain.  

Very cheery, I sound like a 17 year old all over again.

These images in particular are a visual of an internal fall and also what is done to escape that fall:  little hopes and ideas bursting and inflating, they form into the real world some external patterns of gesture and action. Every motion is an attempt to create a feeling of concrete cohesion in the life I'm living.  

I'd like to make the real world around me into a place that supports my own internal world forever but the rungs on the ladders crumble and the steps on the stairs shrink as my mental processes lose control of limbs.  So bridges and support barriers are built and lists are made from words to enforce a new structure and to build something streamlined and powerful to move through the difficult landscape ahead - a clear focus must be developed in order to pilot myself to my hoped for destination.  I must try to be a bit less dopey.

So in order to avoid my decline into death and nothing I feel that the best idea is to confront the inevitable but to have a few tricks up my sleeve ready for when it happens - so far the only way I've been typical and predictable is by being typically me - so to be less typically me is the way to prepare for the decline far ahead.  I can make the declination into an ascension and become more than I could ever imagine and actually win against the inevitable. Cheat death.

7.3.12 - 29.2.12

8.3.12 - I tidied under the stairs to extract the bags of last years installation and salvage all the pieces that are going to have a lot of use in the near future.
Despite seeing forevermore singular magpies I have actually managed to get most things done without much of a hitch - so it could be an indication of superstition revealing itself to be JUST superstition or it could be an indication that things are going to get very bad.... very slowly.

6.3.12 - more time elapses and get's spent on the right and wrong moments and movements... more and more predictable patterns of me surrounding a glowing orb of slow burning potential.

5.3.12 - A red marker pen is a brilliant addition to my pile of stationery - I was getting a little bit annoyed with pink highlighter.

4.3.12 - a daily planner is all well and good but I've now also got a monthly planner so that I can organize my month ahead and create better organized long term creative projects.

3.3.12 - ordered some cheap frames - wore my sun hat - caroused - read my books - rearranged meaning - then got a bit bored of everything before becoming interested again.

2.3.12 - Went to see Sleigh Bells and really enjoyed it - mostly because I've heard all of their songs - a comparatively short gig with no encore but I did get to meet the lead singer who signed my ticket... though the big event of the day was when I got home and received the new shoes I've bought off e-bay.   For the past year and a half I've been wearing a very faithful pair of black hush puppies which have been incredibly comfortable and remarkably resilient to all the trouble I put them through - as I daintily, and with hush of a puppy, make my way through day to day life in a relaxed fashion.
Lately though, I've been feeling a slight malaise and think it's time to take my life a little bit more seriously, be a little more aggressive, forget relaxation.  The new shoes really reflect that - very clunky, Dr Marten style fake crocodile skin shoes - ready to kick my life into more amazing shapes.

1.3.12 - Saw MMoths at the Kraak Gallery - a very silent and slow evening where everyone was stood quietly staring at  slow music.  Sort of nice to see people standing still together in a completely unawkward fashion... unlike on public transport - where the standing people just whinge inwardly and avoid one another's gaze.

29.2.12 - Superstition is forcing itself on me - having always had an avoidance to cracks in the pavements and a slight dread at seeing a single magpie: with portents of potentially anything going wrong. I've had to come up with all sorts of psychological tricks to stop me from falling into self fulfilling prophecies - one of which involves closing my eyes after seeing a single magpie and merging the memory of a magpie seen earlier in the day into the magpie I'm seeing now... this displaces the magpie from the past into the present thus creating two magpies or at least an essence of two... though the time between seeing each bird has to be within a certain amount of time as my mental image of the first magpie gets more and more fuzzy and unusable.  Though in light of recent magpie sightings I think it may be an idea to develop these skills a little bit further and remember the location, position and the time that I see any singular magpie - that way I'll be able to merge both together into the same coordinates.  Then again there could be consequences in such far reaching space-time warping that would likely result in me seeing more and more singular magpies. Scientific rationalization of so many singular magpies could be attributed to their breeding cycle perhaps.