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Sorry I havn’t posted anything for a while, My doctors have doubled my meds and now I am more or less useless. I just cant be bothered doing anything. the apathy will wear off soon – hopefully in time for me to lodge my assignments!yawn.

Think of.. The Tonys!

It has a nice combination of humor and sweet personality.Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a great concept for a musical and I enjoy some of the songs, but I have to admit that some of the songs seem a little incongruous (Like Great Big Stuff – which is very Syncopated and wanders between rap and jazz and several others) usually I like incongruity, and I cant debate it gets in your mind…. The best bit on the Dirty Rotten Scoundrels album without a doubt is the message from John Lithgow that tells everyone to go out and buy tickets because he wants the money.The Light in the Piazza took out almost all the Technicals. It was the only non humorous musical on offer really and sounded quite pretty – but not really very original (IMHO) I thought it sounded very Derivative of Sondheim – nothing wrong with that, it was pretty – but I didn’t think it was anything to write home about.Speaking of Sondheim, they celebrated his 75th Birthday at the Tonys with a duet between Hugh Jackman and Aretha Franklin.

Apologies

I have backslided majorly this week being in some of the worse pain I have felt since the accident. I am still here, I have not been painting because of the pain but my current piece is going well.I have realized that my goal of painting at least an hour every day is not particularly possible all the time so I am amending it to trying to do at least an hour of Art things every day…. I will make an effort to post more as I enjoy writing about the wacky world of art so I am planning to include more of my inspirations, more shows (as I have a goal of attending more openings) and the occasional nugget of arty farty crap that reaches my eye…

If I thought that what you thought was that I hadn’t thought about sharing my thoughts

I have been expanding my musical theater collection even more – I now have over a day of music just in musicals and have started sorting them into separate sub genres (like my metal collection)I like sub genres.I have been particularly appreciating Company (1970 – Sondheim) which has some brilliant comedic songs and typical Sondheim lyrics. I particularly like the song ‘the little things’ which is a brilliant look at marriage and relationships and divorce that still gives me tears in the eyes from laughing.Tick Tick BOOM! (2001 – Jonathan Larson) is a great rock style musical with a brilliant homage/filk/takeoff of the Sunday song from ‘Sunday in the Park with George’ this is worth listening to just for the drool line.

Photography

I have had the distinct pleasure of photographing my art properly this past week.My record is 40 Photos out of which 1 was ok.Thank god for Digital!I will probably post the images on Flickr soon if you want to take a look…. The issues with these photos were the darkness of the rooms and the specific light sources (such as overhead lights) a flash would create a horrible sheen (as would having the wrong lights on) but without lights or flash would make the images very grainy and quite dark.My internship with a local artist taught me something about photographing art (although he mostly used water colors) and using Liam as a pack horse I took to the outside to position my works in the right light outside.To an outsider this would have looked very funny as we chased the shadows and dappled light across the lawn and moved between the front yard and the back…. Some are for portfolios, some are for entries and some are because I will be creating a proper website soonish and want a good collection.I am looking forward to studying photography because it may help here, and with photographing subjects prior to painting.

New meaning to the phrase…

Wim Delvoye seems to have made his career focussing on many things that some people might consider Shit. The Cloaca works are machines that are fed with real food, passing through a range of acids and the food emerges as..um….. This is the same artist who produced a series of taxadermied ducks in a chain with their heads stuck up each others..

Eek!

I cant enter the names of these works in any Shows without titles!… I like having a name that raises questions about the piece, perhaps the questions I have in my mind when doing the work…. I am personally not happy with ‘untitled’ or the new trend of ‘untitled (insert title that is not important enough to be a title but is impoirtant enough to be a subtext title in parentheses)’ if anyone can think of a title for these pieces I would appreciate it – Titles I have kicked around are: Repose Regression Sigh Coocoon Pathos Maybe reading back over the original blog entries may help – I know I posted all this for a reason!

Glazing

I have been trying over the past few months to break myself of the traditional oil painting mold…. In other words to loosen up my style and create something that is more “art”, rather than a duplicate copy…. Its fun to see something emerge under your hand – its almost like I have no control, like I am the conduit through which my art is born.

YeeeHa!

he has so much character and the painting, even in the early stages, is popping already – you can see what he will become by my basic blocking and introuctory shading…. In other News, Art Riot is having a very good sale at the moment, I have picked up some new pallette knives, were 6.99 now 2.99 and a nice set of hogshair brushes with a case for 9.99 was 16.99…. I have a few expensive sable brushes for my careful detail work but usually I just buy inexpensive hogshair and replace them as needed.

When to let go

its an interesting abstracted piece and seems to have a slight social commentary emerging but my technique is everywhere and the anatomy and color isn’t popping…. So I cant really decide whether to let it go for a bit and concentrate on some new subject matter, or to keep plugging away at him and treating him as a challenge…. one of the competitions I am entering I have to offer them for sale and I know Aftermath is one of the best paintings to enter, but I dont want to sell him!