8.12.12 - 16.10.12

8.12.12 - a whole friday night and saturday morning spent scanning my diary and uploading them onto this blog ready to have annoying captions written underneath each page... looking forward to starting a weekly per page diary next year as this page a day idea has proven to be very exhausting.

7.11.12 - a stress letter sent to the big manager.  This isn't a stressed out letter sent by me but I have permission to use it. 

6.12.12 - this node monster is moving directly towards us - coming towards the camera or viewpoint of the viewer.  Right up your eye.  It has certain questions that need an answer except it doesn't have the words to ask.

5.12.12 - just about destroyed my school admissions booklet for the sake of art - I rarely need it though which proves I'm good at my job.

4.12.12 - a collection of seeing whilst all  I'm supposed to do is hear.  I love the reflectivity  of biro ink when it's scribbling onto glossy paper - the black circle on this image is pure biro and it looks great when it get's scanned.

3.12.12 - first day back off work - was suprisingly enjoyable - which means I must be getting sick.

2.12.12 - uneventful end to my week off work.

1.12.12 - static wavelengths fail to interrupt the hope of coming to some finality though the activity never ends.

30.11.12 - went to the opening evening at The Bowery - left a big pile of business cards and spoke to some rich looking people then decided to leave so I could get back home early and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  It was nice to have a look though and took some cheeky photos of people looking at my work not realizing I'd actually made it.

29.11.12 - the ghost tower.

28.11.12 - the beacon signals for me in the distance but is obscured by broken machinery and various piles of junk.  A long time can be spent just trying to get through stuff to get somewhere only to forget your destination during they journey... this is why lists are important - paper can be more trustworthy than my mind... if i don't write lists then within a two weeks I'm living under rubbish.  Literally and metaphorically.

27.11.12 - then a close up of the beacon.... the sharp pain erupts in different parts of my legs - the price of standing up for a whole day yesterday.

26.11.12 - set up my exhibition at the Bowery in Leeds.  It took about between 10am and 5pm to set up - really hard work.

25.11.12 - a sky full of mysteries made of gas nebulas and having all kinds of colours and patterns and even lifeforms.  How to explain something with no relevance to real life and to make it gripping?

24.11.12 - first day of my week off and I accidently format my computer - which leads to all kinds of regrets - though after a few hours I suddenly feel free, like the shackles of ''important'' data had been broken... like getting rid of loads of baggage... and loads of writing and pictures too but I've run data recovery software since then so my data... and baggage are slightly restored.

23.11.12 - and finally I leave work for a week off so I can get some proper work done.

22.11.12 - and we're all in danger of growing up into blank and hopeless faces.

21.11.12 - children are born into the world and forced into schools by law - before this they are forced into life by nature. I'm hoping to be very careful if I ever decide to have children and hope that they live a life that people deserve but rarely get.  I doubt I'd be able to provide this kind of life at the moment.

20.11.12 - ideas and plans develop under the uneventful shadows of living slowly.  A house somewhere ready to be moved into and made perfect, a family yet to be created but thought of and creating fear in the stillness.  How does one cope with gradual changes and looking back on what happened before and realizing that it'll never happen again and how lucky they were to begin with.  Though it didn't feel that way at the time.

19.11.12 - then a scrap of self blossoms alters into something else - perhaps ideas and thoughts bubble off to somewhere else - they get lost from the normal world and disappear into some ethereal somewhere - still bits of skin and hair and face and soul but somehow drifting away so they become pure and alive in a way that isn't defined by evolution and biology.  

18.11.12 - unimaginative caption and drawing and sticking of bus ticket into diary equals not sticking bus tickets into my diary anymore.

17.11.12 - the flyer design for my exhibition at the Bowery at the end of the month which is ongoing until 15th February. 

16.11.12 - the system eats itself and somehow this gives it an inexhaustible supply of food - like imaginary money an absence can keep multiplying.

15.11.12 - it collects itself at the hour of the blood tide sit's banner of it's serial code held up so it can be taken away and serialised and syndicated with it's own theme song and end title music.

14.11.12 - lines connect down into the words and images below - one page of a school admissions brochure doodled on for days on end is sufficient covering for two pages of diary.  I really hated school and don't agree with the way the British education systems works but now I work for it. 

13.11.12 - some creature made from spare parts of a dead imagination - the limbs just drop off from a central core the same size as every other bit of it.  It's not really a creature just a collection of falling brokenings.

12.11.12 - the eye stares down at the compartments and makes notes.

11.11.12 - Collage material - photocopies of skin in black and white.  Colour photo copies of skin can look quite pornographic.

10.11.12 - Collaging tool - The Marker Pen.

9.11.12 - went to Doncaster to visit my remaining family.  Looking out of train windows does make me feel incredibly mortal - like the moment I step on I've already stepped off at some point in the future and that moment on the train become other moments on the train all blended together into one journey back and forth to Doncaster or Wherever.

8.11.12 - the angle angel setting out different parts of addresses and names into seperate containers (all packed together though, in one big cargo crate above it's head) once it reaches the top level of the world it will jumble them together into happier combinations and then discard them because happiness isn't allowed anymore.

7.11.12 - 2nd time my card has been lost in the past two months.  Unremarkable inconveniences repeat.

6.11.12 - on lazy days I catch the tram and the bus simply because it's hard to get out of bed before half 7am.  I hear that I should eat more salt.  Apparently salt is good in moderation and makes you happier to get out of bed.  Problem is I think salt is horrible.

5.11.12 - a collage tool.  The Glue Stick.

4.11.12 - hope is in self employment or at least part self employment - the key word is ''self' - hope is myself.  Everything could be made really good by me as long as I keep doing things.'

3.11.12 - and the artificial red is absent from the neutral colours of my office world - except here.

2.11.12 - the sharp shredding of senses constructs an in intense burning dwarf stars of non event which burns through space time and becomes everything everywhere.

1.11.12 - weekly travel shredded into segments of staring boredom into mobile phones - the best part of the working day.
Started writing a novel on Nanowrimo at the start of this month.  November is some kind of international Novel Writing Month - would rather write a novel than grow a moustache.  Anyway the notes on this page are scrawled ideas for what's going to happen in the 1600 words I have to write everyday. 

31.10.12 the blurriness on the edges of my diary - near the spine - are uncontrollable when scanning.  I weigh them down with as much as I can but I don't want to press too hard in case I damage things.  Anyone is welcome to have a leaf through the genuine article after new years eve.

30.10.12 - I once added a random sequence of numbers together into 26 and then thought that something terrible would happen to me at the age of 26.  Is 45 the new 26?
No.
Unless I want it to be.

29.10.12 - the stars gathered together close into simplified orbs of flatness.

28.10.12 - went to Spooky World and got chased by teenagers dressed up as clowns and other popular monsters.  It wasn't very scary this year - last year it was much more intense so not sure if the acting quality was worse or if I was just too familiar with the corridors from last time.... think it was a bit of both. 

27.10.12 - another to do list.  I like this one.

26.10.12 - they age they died perhaps.  I had a project on graves when I was at art college.  I wasn't a goth though I did have quite an emo haircut about 6 years before emo existed and wore a big baggy Robert Smith jumper.  I really did believe in a lot of things back then - I think as I get older I perform less and less pontifications - and draw less grave stones.

25.10.12 - a wheel in an iris.  A eye turning through it's old smudgy mark pennings.

24.10.12 - Animesh Garg sounds like a great name for a sci fi character.  Though it's just a combination of two children's names.  I've started cutting up my school admissions book and notes made at work.  Collaging at my desk is a very wonderful thing - great artwork can be produced in call centres because I think the creative ganglia is stimulated by hours of boredom and self hate.  Though I doubt my diary is actually ''great art.''

23.10.12 - The big eye watches whirlpools bore in the ground through it's gaze alone

22.10.12 - on a Monday morning we all need hope - or at least I do in my current horrible job.  This fortune card didn't give me any hope though as it seems completely at odd's with my life's trajectory and my situation.   IRRELEVANCE.

21.10.12 - BLACKPOOL.  Really good fun.  Love the annoying people trying to sell me joke books and read my fortune.  Hands were firmly in pockets in case they got picked.  Went to the Dungeons and was ''humiliated'' and also experienced a simulated hanging.  All that sounds sort of kinky - but it wasn't.  Also went up the Tower and visited the wax museum, slightly disappointed that there wasn't a waxwork of Matt Smith.  The highlight of the whole adventure was the Ripley's Believe it or Not Museum.

20.10.2012 - another amazing to do list.  I love getting stuff done on lists.  Saturday is the best day for writing long and difficult to accomplish lists - the listing itself is the best thing - just writing everything that I have to do down and thinking about how east it is to achieve it all.... and then it's all done and I'm really really happy and content and ready to sit down and watch tv.  Unless it doesn't get done in which case I move the task forward a few days into the future.

19.10.12 - I have a good story in my head - an alien post apocalypses on some other planet suspended in the middle of a nebula.  The story seems really good but it's a real effort to write anything because as soon as I do I realize how unworkable the idea is and then adjust everything so it makes more sense meaning the book never get's written... though a made up world's history, religions and cultures get sifted about over and over again.  I hope one day it'll all fall into something that isn't so hopelessly complicated.

18.10.12 - hopefuls build houses on stilts as tall as can be - taller and taller digging needles into the hard earth of stairs going up to nowhere.  A new up is attempting to be defined.

17.10.12 - the 1st time I get a new bank card during this segment of diary entries.

16.12.12 - anyone familiar with my blog will know how much I hate buses.  I have to buy one of these passes every week to get to work.  I do miss the tram but feel good that the slowness of the buses does allow me to get some reading done.

dark reflecting vectors out of measure permanent undercurrents eclipsing through terrain defined by glimmers and stares

Four more images about to finish their auction on Ebay late Sunday evening, all auctions start at 99p;

world skin brightens under eclipsing dark reflecting red black 

click here

 Though my pictures are representative of some form of landscape or figures they never always originally set out to accomplish this - so that's why they look like nothing on this earth, making me unsure as to whether they depict some bizarre undefined chaos or some alien landscape.  They tend to include convergences which allow them to come across as something real - or at least that's my intention.  The above could be interpreted as mountain ranges above a sea with the outline of a biosphere under a black sky.  This isn't my exact interpretation but simply one that could be reached.  My interpretation is quite loose and can be worked out through the images title - though people should feel free to make up their own titles - no need to strictly believe that the title I've given the image is the real title, it's just my own interpretation.

Odd that I spend a lot of time translating myself for myself... and doing a really bad job of it.

vectors align out of measure through terrain defined by coloured outcrops

click here

The above depicts some form of conveyor belt.  I had an odd vision about two years ago when I was being pulled along a conveyor belt and was removed from the factory line because I'd been ''asking too many questions'' - I was then promptly dropped off the conveyor belt into the darkness and my mind got lost from the world, I was plummeting downwards into nothing until I flattened out into being a big cinema screen - everyone had left the cinema and the film had finished.  I remember thinking about how much I'd love to get back home so I could shop for shoes and wishing I had corporeal form again.
Needless to say this shook me up quite a bit and even after I got back to my everyday life I began to feel like I was a ball being dropped into a machine full of obstacles... like a pinball... and that despite how much I question I always have to follow my own trajectory and that I have little choice in the matter... eventually the fact I knew I had no free will actually allowed me to understand how to counteract my own aimless velocity.  That with the knowledge of predetermination I could better recognise how to angle myself to avoid unlikable collisions.  It's a bit like that computer game Frogger.

the bone pillar grimaces and glimmers and stares through it's permanent definition

click here

The image above is much more architectural - there are big similiarities between architecture and biology.  It's all structure - keeping things together into one mass through ergonomics.  Structural objects can sustain themselves under quite a lot of pressure and damage from outside elements.  Structure is gleeful and oppressive - but it also allows for a choice between being outside or being inside.  I have to choice to stay in within my structure and act as if the real world doesn't happen and immerse myself in DVD boxsets and a good book.  I can hide indoors and pretend real life isn't happening  I have in the past really given a lot of thought towards hermits - problem is I do like going to the shops quite a lot so it would probably not work in my favour.  Also the main issue with being indoors is that the corners of the room are very mocking and odd... after a while of lying in bed and staring at the wall on a saturday morning I start to feel very annoyed by the walls.  The imperfections and cracks seem to appear even in the most perfect wall - perhaps as a trick of the light... I focus in on the corners of the room and think about all the many things I have to get done and feel unmotivated due to the throb of the wall's corners which seem to hold a very gleeful and ultimately evil presence.  Never actually put these feelings into words before as the experience is very fleeting but it's definitely there;  the universe looking in on my quiet place.

non solid undercurrents bubble randomly and ominous

click here

And once more with a background of green and a landscape like image built over the top... these ones seem to be very popular for some reason - think using green and red in artwork is a surefire way to get someone interested.

jumbled compartments leading to an imploding compression pulling incorrect associations into a puzzle of disorganised self

Ebay auctions ending on Monday evening.

Compartments forced into togetherness leading to a jumbled puzzle of disorganised self
click here

The titles of my images are starting to say a lot more than I could actually explain.  I like that each title is simply a description of what the image is depicting and that it doesn't matter if the title is grammatical, understandable or whether it even sounds good.  The above depicts various separate compartments pulled towards one focal point - like putting all your junk into a box.  I used to be really good at compartmentalization.  Putting different sides of myself into different parts and organizing my mind into something proper and functional that didn't react emotionally unless it was necessary.  Then it all went hideously wrong and all the compartments fell together and got mish mashed and disorganized and I went a little bit weird.

puts displaced contents of cell shell away from it's imploding compression
click here

The thing is when all those compartments get forced together my mind get's really loud and over crowded.... the only way to solve this is to build a new place and eject the contents of those jostling and spilling compartments - send them to a dark corner of my subconscious where they won't get any attention - the equivalent of a home shopping channel inside my mind - every now and again I can turn over to that channel and decide I don't really want anything that's on sale (most of the time... some of it looks very good... if a little bit expensive).

start simplification pulling incorrect associations into circled non face
click here

So if you think that solved everything then your wrong.  Or I'm wrong.  The problem with our subjective opinions is that everyone is equally right and wrong - which is quite distressing as I find a lot of people saying really stupid things - including me.  A better solution could have been devised.  I revised and reorganised quite a lot of myself because the arrangement was simply not working - though that doesn't mean that all my elements fit together into the world perfectly.  Which is good as I'm not sure I'm too keen on becoming entirely enmeshed in the world anyway - it looks sticky.

Other images also available.

Cutting into colour

I have an exhibition at the Bowery Gallery in Leeds - details can be seen on the flyer above.

The image to the left is a small portion of my 'contempory response' to Matisse.  I can appreciate that I'm a very good fit for this exhibition... my methods and techniques being similar to Matisse's even though my work is usually much more chaotic and over flowing whilst Matisse is very controlled. I'm not any sort of art historian and always hated contextualizing my work at university... often getting into quite intense arguments with lecturers about 'originality' and that I didn't want to 'copy' other artists.  I used to be much more idealistic.
Anyway my point was going to be that when I started collaging I didn't really know what Matisse did or really gave any of his images much thought until I saw a documentary about two years ago and realised in terms of technique he did what I do. So when I was selected to make an image directly on the wall next to lots of original Matisse work I found it really complimentary and apt.  The image I put together on Friday is different from my usual work in that it tries to utilise the negative space a little and also makes more use of flat colour rather than textures.  I did put some patterns and prints in there but simply because if I didn't it wouldn't feel like I'd done it - and that wouldn't be right.

The exhibition preview is on Friday this week at 6pm to 8pm.  Directions and more information can be found here www.thebowery.org

circular teeth notions piled geometry measure themselves as flat visual

Four more images on Ebay... auctions ending on Sunday 24 November at half past ten.  Click on the links below each image to place a bid - all of which started at 99p.

globdules of organic photocopies bleed fake wallpaperclick here

I have to make a wall mural type installation on Monday whilst exhibiting with some Matisse lithographs.  Was hoping to utilize the negative space of the wall in a way similar to what Matisse did with paper.  The final result could eventually look a little bit like the above - except the above has no negative space whatsoever.  Hoping the exhibition will teach me a little about making my art slightly less convoluted in certain areas - though is the fact that images like the above are big gestating textures make them more appealing - in the sense that there can be a lot of different interpretations read into them.

how did the chamber's dimensions measure themselves when the outer geometry invaded?click here

The above is made through using a photograph of my installation at the Bankley Gallery.  Think it gives it a good sense of depth - and like that I've been able to enhance the original image with collage over the top.  Perhaps this could be done in real life if I were to make the exhibition again.  There was a lot I would have added to it if I had the time - and I spent ages putting that installation up and my hand really hurt from so much staplegunning.  Think the title of the above image is really good.

heads piled flattened, inconsistent pool of flat visual

click here

Another example of convolution - though life is pretty convoluted too.

teeth clamp onto circular notion of up and downclick here

I spent an afternoon last weekend sorting all my colours and textures into an organised fashion and found some notebooks from years ago from when I was making animations.  Some nice sketches in them. One of the motivations for making all this work is to trim down on all the thousands of self generated materials I have and to make some money from them.  When I've got rid of all my materials I can print all the new images I've made and collage them into new patterns and ideas and integrate them together differently again.

15.10.12 - 4.10.12

15.10.12 - some images in this diary are best positioned as landscapes but due to the way I've presented them as one long strip I'm unsure this would work.  However you can see below that this one in particular looks much better the other way round. 

14.10.12 - the pages are very blurry in the middle when scanning them - this is due to the diary now being so think with collages - it's getting to the point where it fill's up most of my bag and is probably 10 times thicker than it was when I bought it.

13.10.12 - pin point pressed and pulled through non holes.  Bleeds through a reverberation and I end up stupider and emptier and something quiet and ignored is screaming in secret silence.  The mountain peak transmits uncertainty and jittering.

12.10.12 - the red peak transmissions from a distance - fear itself - lives and emits - it's tethered to the nowhere through a strand of empty.

11.10.12 - mechanized head trapped between the pinchers of pylons.  It's blurred by static and lack of contrast into some hollow blockwork.  My building where I work is empty and walking around it's building is like walking through an unfinished film set.

10.10.12 - so ingrained in my own style and methods that images are becoming like leafs falling off a tree - like all these copious images are predictable and simply like slivers of my own head falling out - and perhaps every image that fall's out is a braincell being infected with another pointless image of the same old abstraction.  Would I get to the point where everything is erased and replaced by slides of collage and if you drilled into my skull it'd just be full of glue and paper?

9.10.12 - another cell lined up for infection.

8.9.10 - the roundelled pattern wall breaks open and gleaming hell pours in.  Again.

7.10.12 - diagram of a bad evening.  

6.10.12 - something in the sky/ether/above/heaven/somewhere is preying on everyone - forcing them into traps of themselves and boundaries of their hearts.  It steals everything and leaves everyone with no ideas, concepts, desires -just a void they fill with words. 

5.10.12 - hopping in their singular legs to from one point to the next they watch the maze in the centre of the sun and their heads glow with some deep ambivalence.   Like me they don't read any newspapers.

4.10.12 - pooling together of everything organic - the few conscious remains rear their heads and live in the agony of  'no more privacy' - they wish they could just go shopping again.  I've always liked shopping.

petrified bones zoomed in close positioned hell of self spire

Just spent this morning organizing my collage materials into the correct order.  So I now have 5 color coordinated plastic bags all of which are full of materials.  So likely to make a load more small images to sell on Ebay later on this evening - and they will likely be very well composed as now I know where to find all my colours.  Organisation is helpful for composition.

Anyway in the meantime here are three pictures selling on Ebay - all ending in the next 8 hours.... have a look at these small bits of affordable art work.

petrified bones living as structures over the cliche red of hell -click here

Hell.  Is it red?  I've always imagined it to be more grey but also that the hidden essence of hell is red and glowing. So if you were able to dig through the grey car park concrete and get into it's heart it would probably be all gloopy red... syrupy and far too sweet.  Also there must be a real sky in hell. As what would be the point in suffering if you couldn't try and fail to reach higher.

zoomed in close on a rain drop falling through white line measures - click here

I actually doubt this looks anything like a raindrop.  Not even on a molecular level.  But it is certainly falling, impacting but unlike a raindrop it's not breaking.  Pictures are so still and most only convey movement rather than achieve it.

blue circle skeletal rafters supporting unnecessary roof which stands far away from an unfeasibly positioned self spire - click here

This is too pictures at once superimposed above each other.  if you tilt it to the right it's a different image.  The self spire then becomes feasibly positioned whereas the blue circle skeletal rafters appears to be growing from the self spire but with no perceptual logic.

3.10.12 - 22.9.12

3.10.12 - text funnels of cut up details - data protection issues forbids the full strands... 

2.10.12 - flower wilts in an explosive confinement chamber.  A hidden biological countdown.

1.10.12 - imitations - vertigo - facing downwards - forever - even after dead.  no kind of continued - just a loop repeating itself until someone finds the void switch. 

30.9.12 - this the fact this picture has no colours on it seems to sum up the feeling of trawling through Leeds whilst it was full of drunks and normal people - I was pulling along a big cart full of wonky and unbalanced pictures and it was raining and it made me think that maybe I should produce much smaller work.   

29.9.12 - some images look much better when I've scanned them - the reality of this image is that it's just a load of scribble - suppose there's something quite automatic and appealing about that though.  Problem is that the patterns of myself just keep repeating it's like being in a hall of mirrors of my own head... the same images producing themselves slightly differently every time getting neither better or worse... though perhaps I'm not recognizing that there is a plan and a destination in mind... or perhaps that destination is completely blurred out by years of never getting there.

28.9.12 - an unusual house on the mountain breathes in and out in the clouds of nebulae.

27.9.12  - long necked creature tries out a selection of 5 lollipops - you can tell which one it dislikes the most.  The one on  our left.... and on it's right.

26.9.2012 - and it's popsicle is formed through a funnel of time sequences.

25.9.12 - my dream castle hurtles away into space away from the horrible drudgery of statistics and calls.

24.9.12 - sheet of timetables found on the floor at work and sneakily pasted into my diary.

23.9.12 - a few notes on how to promote artwork on twitter... in my case right bizarre associative sentences and make as many of them hashtagged as possible.

22.9.12 - trip to Bolton to pick up work that didn't get into a print prize.  Had a pretty good walk though by getting lost and managed to buy some birthday presents.

tangible measurements of undercurrent mind/brain bloodpaths

Yet more images on sale on EBay - click the title below each image to have a look and a bid.  All start out as being 99p.

tangible colour data in a straight loop of no end

watching measurements of undercurrent bloodpaths

a semblance of the mind/brain is bigger inside the dead

Will be adding images very frequently so if you'd like to bookmark this page to keep an eye out and bookmark this page http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/garth_simmons/m.html?item=140877256677&ViewItem&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562

also feel free to share on your facebook pages and twitter.  Perhaps with more attention I may make a small fortune one day..... fingers crossed.