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.