On 2 and 3 Mar I got the zodiac sign’s text file ready with the colours appropriate for each one, Adelaide told me what they are and I asked her innocently who decided such things. It seemed strange to associate colours with individual star signs but I guess that nothing is beyond the realm of possibility when it comes to the horoscope.
Or life. On 2 Mar I went to the National Art School to see the Queer Art show in which Christine Dean is featured, see the entry for Feb where there’s a reference to this artist. The show was interesting and I particularly liked the works by Emily Parsons-Lord which are made of pigments burned onto paper giving a nice fluttery effect like smoke. In the evening I made an error leaving a show opening before the gathering broke up as I’d told someone we’d be there (Simon and I) but Simon didn’t come and the person I met, Bernadette, left at about 6.30pm. I’m not very sociable so being surrounded by people who are ignoring you, as people tend to do at art shows, is a kind of torture so I left just after 7pm. Anthony turned up near to 8 o’clock and messaged me but by this time I was home in front of the TV.
The following day I suffered on account of the mix-up, though the day before had been productive with two watercolours completed (see below). The first of these is the second one I made, it’s ‘You reap what you sow’ or in Japanese “mi kara deta sabi” (“rust from the body”).
The next painting says ‘A waste of breath’ or “uma no mimi ni nembutsu” (“chanting in a horse’s ear”). There are tons of “kotowaza” in Japanese reminding me of how as a young man I’d thought about writing a novel where everything the protagonist says is a saying. In Japanese something that is “waza to” is deliberate and “koto” means “thing”.
Utilitarian speech. On the day I started planning the zodiac series I had no idea I’d wake up full of foreboding, but it was anyway a Friday so it seemed appropriate that I was determined to be miserable. In the morning Ming had some obsession we had to work through related to art school and her blog, which at that time featured writings about the Middle East where we’d travelled four years earlier. She had an idea she was being discriminated against on account of things she’d written about religion but these fears went away even before she went to Melbourne with her parents and Omer. While she was away I kept painting and finished the zodiac series then started on more figurative works without collage.
At the end of this jag I went back to collage. This time I picked up where I’d started with Jeffrey Dahmer as the theme. I’d even taken one version of this work to the framers but then cancelled it and brought those early efforts home in the envelope I’d used to take them out to Richmond. The second time I used the figurative watercolour painting I’d developed while Ming and Omer were away but added collage and Posca marks on top of it. With the Japanese “kotowaza” paintings I’d been able to fit whole phrases onto a sheet of A5 paper, and with the new collage works I did the same but only with names. I did “Dahmer mostro” and “Barry Manilow” fitting the item (1 panel) with 12 letters, the first six done in collage and the second six done over the top in Posca (see below).
“Mostro” means “monster” in Italian and Barry Manilow was a torch-song crooner from the seventies I used to love.
On 11 Mar a friend of a friend asked me if I’d swap one of these works for a work of her own and we organised to meet the next day at her house, a terrace in Woolloomooloo. I promised to bring some things along in my rucksack and she took four of them plus a paramontage that was in the portfolio I also had with me. Below are the works of hers I chose, and which I later took to the framer. I planned to send the painting to Japan and keep the drawings here in Sydney.
On the same day that Simon and I met with Rozee we also went to Milsons Point by taxi. We caught the cab in the CBD, a short walk from Woolloomooloo. We met with Billy Lake who Simon had chosen to be in a group show with the two us and another friend. A young woman who makes large colourful canvases with a cartoonish bent that chimes in with the popular culture themes of our own work.
During the following week Ming and Omer left to go back to their place and I was busy so didn’t have time to go to poetry readings, though on Thursday night I went to Marrickville to have dinner with a friend and some of his pals. I was still making art but now with an exhibition planned it was somehow different, I was more selective, and thought in terms of themes and subjects.
In fact I felt less free, more constrained by other people’s opinions. I wasn’t sure I liked this new feeling or if I disliked it. It felt good to be in train to becoming a collected artist, but on the other hand perhaps I hadn’t gotten used to the push and pull, the interaction that you have with an audience.
On the morning of 24 Mar I began to think of my father again just after reading a Facebook friend’s post about ‘The Merchant of Venice’ – by this time I hadn’t read a Shakespeare play in over a decade but this teacher was doing a survey of Shakespeare’s works, one at a time, before posting his thoughts – and mine sat pungent and strong as a drill. I imagined posting something on Facebook but decided to write here in this diary instead. I’d gone to bed the night before without watching ‘Kavanaugh QC’ for some reason with the cold weather I was less inclined to stay up late though I got up in the morning at the usual time, and as the currawongs sang in the distance (or was it quite close). I wondered if it would rain.
In fact I’d put on washing. I’d considered the night before starting a new series of paintings but had been celebrating my aloneness so declined evening’s invitation and instead watched TV, it was a rather sombre ending to an episode of ‘Father Brown’ then I tuned into Ten Bold to catch an ep of ‘NCIS’, I’m sure mum would’ve loved it, Gibbs listening to a blind photographer talk about the sweet smell of a diabetic’s breath, how do they make these things up where do the ideas come from do they have a catalogue of quaint facts as reference for their scriptwriters yes nowadays there are spin-offs all over the place ‘NCIS New Orleans’, ‘NCIS Los Angeles’, ‘NCIS Hawaii’ the beat rolls on and it’s me thinking of what to paint thinking of my father and how I got away without his blessing but on his coattails, thinking of how I make my paintings on the dining table next to the kitchen.
Mum was always in the kitchen and I was always putting things away in the cupboards sometimes cooking mum’d suddenly say “Where’s the salad dressing” (no she wouldn’t she’d say just “dressing”) and I’d get it out of the cupboard where I’d just placed it tidily, always putting things in their right place, correcting editing life, this is what a child does he or she edits his parent’s lives I’m still my mother’s son still my father’s son, my parents are still alive in my mind and they’ll be alive forever in this diary, together forever Peter and Judy 1955 married in Brighton I was born in Brighton Hospital on my birth certificate it has such information like ‘Kavanaugh QC’ the dry chats in chambers the applications to a club John Thaw also in ‘Inspector Morse’ then came ‘Lewis’ then ‘Endeavour’ series of TV shows going from the nineties to the twenties with Oxford at the centre, mum and dad went to Oxford on a Smithsonian jaunt it was the year I started the BA, it was 1981 I still have the group shot all those rich Americans in their suits looking collegial, mum made a drawing it’s on my wall as well I was at Paul’s that year hated it couldn’t wait to get out ended up near Badde Manors behind Grace Bros learned how to ride a motorcycle on land they later built public housing on, it used to be a great big paved lot my Ducati came afterward I started on a Suzuki with a black tank on my ‘Ls’ yes tootling around the lot learning how to ride my bike I thought a Ducati was cooler that’s why I bought it a friend of a friend Cyren Johnson had a Ducati he tried to ride mine once dropped it I didn’t get angry why would you get angry with someone for damaging a stupid bike though I regretted the mark on the tank the black tank with the gold stripe.
My heart is a black tank it contains a universe of suffering endless I told Omer my mind works like this if you added up the distance that every plant that had ever lived on the earth billions of years every continent every island every plant nodding. The distance of all of the leaves moving through space nodding I saw a post Facebook suggested I report about the invasion am I right it was me wondering if it would ever be possible to trust any church given the Russian church failed to communicate the truth about the invasion in fact took no steps to stop the carnage people dying for what? how could it be possible to trust authority of any kind given the failure of the ecumenical project to effect change ‘Kavanaugh QC’ and dying people in the distance ha! here only the sound of a commercial jet taking off over there the jets are throwing fire into the earth bombs spitting fire walls thrown down tumbling tumbling down acres of desperate ruin.
All the lives like mine. I asked for quotes from two framers because for the upstanding houses on Sydney you need frames if you want to sell art or so I thought little did I imagine how dear it could be. Frames so you can hang paper works on walls. Making frames a specialised task they have a selection of mouldings on the wall using Velcro carpet on the wall to hold the mouldings, customer chooses which one picks it off the wall there is a rack of mount-board samples as well match the mount-board with the moulding to make a set the sales clerk takes down the IDs of the items all very civilised the process not always seamless I imagine people often complain about the cost we worry about budgets the price of electricity up insurance up gas up petrol up everything up except incomes.
Right to be cautious. Once home and before the time to watch the news I went through paintings I threw half-a-dozen items into recycling they’re paper after all maybe they’ll come back as kitchen towels or removalist boxes but the paintings I reserved for showing I did set aside in a pile every day changing my idea about what should be framed my friend Basia said in a message, “exhibiting art is a completely different game than making it” like chess like international diplomacy a game with endless numbers of variables nodding like the leaves of a plant in my garden spathiphyllum coleus colocasia endless centimetres moving through space over time time the variable space the variable I repot bits of the spathiphyllum using plastic pots soil from IGA carted with mum and dad’s trolley down Bay Street past the houses variable frontages some wood some brick the cars parked next to the pavement like chess pieces red blue grey black white coming back from the IGA or was it going to the IGA I can’t remember anyway I saw a lime green Yaris it was new driven by an old man.
On 25 Mar I did more painting, completing and starting I don’t exactly remember but the hours spent this way are a blessing at my time of life, what have I got to complain about. It was the election and I watched most of the broadcast but switched to ‘MacGyver’ when I got sick of the repetition, the show about a hacker who’d made a nuclear power plant overheat of course someone had to die in this case a factory technician with – wait for it – a family. My daughter told me that she’d been to see her brother and he’d drunk alcohol so couldn’t drive her and Ryo to the station and the flat is far from the station so she wanted to get a cab but it wouldn’t come so she caught a bus instead. We seem to care about our children in a way that makes them different from other people even though they are just “other people” with their enthusiasms and biases anyway her mother gave me some Japanese “kotowaza” so I could make paintings, black-and-white this time, and I also made two “double overlay” paintings this time on a Christmas theme.
I was funny with the “kotowaza” paintings because Basia without seeing the first in the set (I always make them in sets of two) had suggested grey and blue when I asked her what colours I should use, and I’d made a black-and-white painting. She put up in Messenger a photo she’d taken of a rabbit seen when she was walking in the street it was yellow and blue, and so I decided to use blue Posca for the second painting for which I got a saying. At the end of the month I went back to doing pure collages (see below) Some on cars and some on food.
No comments:
Post a Comment