For my Dear Readers. This year's Resolution is to try -- you can't but try -- to worry less, to care less about those who preach Life in Culture impossible. I've received the very good advice not to listen to people who do not help anyway. Happy New Year!
Dear readers,
...thank you for following these artsy follies through 2015. Now there is an entire, weird year in the Archives; most popular, if Stats may be trusted, were "For Charlie Hebdo" (a poem in memoriam) and "My Hoovercraft is Full of Eels"... February and March were exceptional months too, full of odd twists and turns and surprises. I was surprised too. And now, anchors aweigh! New adventures ahead.
We're finished with the six-cornered thing. There's a Vernissage in February -- it has to be dry by then. And I have to lament my oils -- they might look good in real life, but as for photos, they are charming as passports. Something with the small details on coarse grain is making the eye of the camera bleed, especially if we have to shoot them in this lustreless, grey December. (I complained last winter, I will complain again...) Albeit grainy, for the record and hopefully still inspiring:
I've added some Japanese lanterns in the final hextangle (heptangle? they're seven fields) and all seven are sure to go in their own style. The lanterns don't have much patience to stay in Physalis shape for very long.
As for the meaning of the blue drop, I'm open for suggestions (as always). It might be a blue drop.
The musician/painter wishes you a Merry Christmas -- I had fun designing the letters for this one.
Everything is built on the letter "O"...
Some were surprisingly difficult (I had to move everything about for "R") while others just knocked on the door and started to sing carols. Enjoy :)
We need a break before we finish that oil (see previous weeks) and to get calmer in general. For these are worried times -- economy, ecology and last but not least madmen of all colours exploding now and then, sort of everywhere. This sometimes leads to panicky decisions, and Panic is not a fine mood to make decisions in. So behold: The Keeping Calm Helmet, protecting us against ourselves.
It's in my standard ink'n'aqua, letter size. Now we go close to see the Greek helmet that inspired it in part
which I know by heart. And the frankly ugly modern helmet that I saw on a poster
with the one camera that prompted the Keeping Calm Helmet, regrettably not worn by them. The KC Helmet Mk.1 sports just any number of cameras and antennae and whatnot for taking in many views, which has a sobering effect. It also seems to give the poor head other chemistry (perhaps for saving it from fatal over-sobriety, balance is the thing) and I envision calming flowery music in the headphones. (Merely a suggestion. Interpret it ad. lib. Your own imagination is the helmet that fits you best.)
An old friend suggested that I shouldn't make so detailed little works in the winter, for then people will go so close and smear the glass with their runny noses... but I sort of like the mayhem of colours and lines that one sees upon resizing: Here you have the flowers...
And here is the visor.
Now keep calm :)
Desires are interesting, irksome but interesting. They are like babies. They refuse to behave, do not care for the socially acceptable or even excusable, they mess things up and trying to hush or put them to sleep invariably makes matters worse. It is impossible to reason with them:
"Come, now little body, there are other things in life; friendship, birdsong, sports and the music of J.S. Bach... Don't be silly. Let's go and have a cold bath, these things help, get your mind off it..."
And like all infants in need, the body answers by screaming louder.
With this in mind, work goes on. It is time for a sharp corner on the hexagonal canvas.
I have to shoot this a little from the sides, straight on the paint is glittering like this, mad and wet...
I immediately had to christen this band The Edvard Munch Choir, for reasons obvious. While you have the final say as usual, I have a feeling that they somehow represent some unfulfilled desires, as mentioned above.
Ps. Speaking of odd existences I found this Twinklebox, an invention by one Aaron Bradbury. The thingamajig is "...a music box caught in an infinite world, set to his own melody" and obviously has no other desire than to roll about and play its tune, quite uncaring about anything else.
I sort of envy it a little.
The miniaturesque work with my six cornered oil goes on, filling the mauve field with a desolate Northern landscape/seascape/icescape -- with a cabin or hut of sorts -- and the yellow field with a slightly careless interior.
Everything is improvised. The little cabin (which didn't want to be a pine grove or cliff) reminds me of a song by Swedish poet Dan Andersson about a charcoal burner who is waiting for his one true love that, rest assured, should show up some night here in the middle of nowhere just any year now, this dearest lady with eyes of blue. Whoever she is. (The subtext is rather saddening, dark as charcoal soot.)
Onwards. I didn't care much for straight angles in the yellow field. I sort of wanted to get done. With these two fields of relative harmony done after the lively green and blue and the quizzical (and inquisitive) grey centre we might now be ready for something really insane.
