UPSTAIRS AND THE UNBEARABLE NECESSITY OF CHAOS

What attracted me to this top floor flat when I first saw it was that it had an upstairs: a small, awkward-shaped, added-on loft, the sloping ceiling high enough in the middle for me to stand upright but not for any taller people. A space obviously unsuitable for large artwork but I took it anyway. Kindly friends helped to lug my heavy etching press up the narrow staircase, I had a sink installed, built racks and shelves for my equipment, and for quite a while the place served me well enough for printmaking and graphics. 

Now, almost sixteen years later, it's become less of a studio and more of a chaotic storage dump. Mea culpa, yes, but I also blame the advent of the digital age. The Mac is downstairs: that explains everything, doesn't it? A computer, a graphic tablet and thou, my muse, and we can happily ignore all of that upstairs mess - the paints, the unfinished paintings, the broken frames, the stacks of paper, the smell of solvents, the greasy rags, the bits of wood, the bottles and jars and boxes and tins and tubes of art-stuff which, the less it is used, the more it accumulates in case it will be used at a later date. 

But wait. Lately I've been neglecting downstairs (less blogging, less computering in general, did you notice?) and cautiously venturing back upstairs to sit there and think. A few nights ago - late night is usually my decision time - I resolved to start clearing the chaos. But then I noticed that the mess was visually quite intriguing so I decided to start a new large painting instead.
You can see its present stage in the middle of the bottom row of these photos. The painting will incorporate, in as yet unpredictable fashion, fragments of the things I see upstairs, including parts of an old, unfinished painting of my parents when young (middle row). The canvas is almost my height, the ceiling not high enough for an easel and the room too narrow and crowded to allow some other support so I have to work in a variety of crouching positions. But now I need the chaos to stay as it is because it's my current inspiration. 

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COMING BACK IS NOT SO EASY, AS YOU COULD TELL FROM THE LONG PAUSE

For me every departure and every return involves a complete re-adjustment of focus, of purpose, of intention, as if the internal and external machinery which sets me in motion has ground to a halt. Like when you put new batteries in a digital camera and the screen message scolds: Date and time not set  and then you have to re-enter the whole shebang - year, month, day, hour, minutes - because the stupid camera has forgotten everything.

I am that stupid camera. It's me who needs re-setting every time but every time is not quite the same and with every departure and every return over the years, tiny changes take place, a kind of evolution and who knows what the end result will be or if there ever is an end result but I have a feeling it's all to the good. Going away is good, probably essential for an artist. And returning is good, certainly essential, but difficult.

There's a poem by Blaise Cendrars which begins (my translation) like this:

Quand tu aimes il faut partir            When you love you must go
Quitte ta femme quitte ton enfant    Leave your wife leave your child
Quitte ton ami quitte ton amie         Leave your boyfriend leave your girlfriend
Quitte ton amante quitte ton amant  Leave your mistress leave your lover
Quand tu aime il faut partir.             When you love you must go.

(read the whole poem in French here)

The title is: Tu est plus belle que le ciel et la mer and, in my view, it's Cendrars' hymn to love, passionate but not sentimental, leaving love behind only to stretch it out like a fishing net to collect all of life and then offer it back to loved ones, transformed. It reminds me of Van Gogh in his outsider solitude, caressing with brush and pen everything he saw.

What I like about going away is leaving the familiar. Even if, especially if, the familiar is good and is comfortable. Being somewhere else, where the walls are not your walls, the objects not your objects, the faces not the faces you know and the hours not the hours you waste or use at home - all this shakes up your body and your psyche, reminding you that you can always start again, no matter how late it is.

So I'm a bit overwhelmed by the familiar at the moment, dealing with some boring stuff that needs to be dealt with and trying to retain the impetus towards painting that was rekindled in Tavira. Hence my bloggish silence.

Don't go away, if you're here, and come back if you've given up on me. I am most definitely still here and will be visible again very shortly. �

Bli's dog with almond trees. Tavira, January 2010

PS: My website is currently being transferred to a new host and as it includes the main Blaugustine blog, I can't add new posts there until the transfer is complete. This should be within the next day or three.

TAVIRA SEQUEL

YESSSS!! 

In Tavira I noticed that there is an artists' association and gallery called Casa 5 and when I got back home I looked it up on the internet and found that they have an artists' residency programme. After a friendly exchange of emails, I sent in my application. 

Obviously I was just obeying orders from that cunning life-coach in the sky who thinks I need a kick up the cosmic derrière to propel me out of my little swivel chair in front of my little screen in my little London routine. Obviously my application was accepted. I'm all shook up!

So, around the middle or end of January I'll be going back for about five or six weeks, staying in Casa 5 and working on paintings, drawings, collage, video etc. based on Tavira - the town, the people, the ambiance, whatever inspiration strikes while I'm there - with an exhibition in the gallery at the end of my residency. I'll have my laptop and WIFI so blogging will continue, if perhaps intermittently (as usual). 

Here's an appropriate graffiti I discovered on a wall in Tavira - I didn't know when I took the picture that it would be so appropriate.

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RANDOM ROAST CHICKEN THOUGHTS PLUS MORE AUTOBIOGRAPHICS

Taking a roast chicken out of the oven, all glistening golden brown and smelling like celebration, no matter how often you've done it, there's a thrill. But when the two legs have been carved and eaten (discarding the delicious lethal skin) the celebration ends. The festive bird is just an amputated carcass, to be transformed tomorrow into sandwich, soup or salad. Nice, but not a thrill.

Isn't life a little like that?
No? Okay it was just a passing thought, when taking a chicken out of the oven.

The Burial of Mickey Mouse: Part 23

When I'm not at one of my part-time jobs - which now includes selling Brazilian handicrafts at a shop in Bond Street - I come and paint in the spare-room, the house quiet and still when T is at work. I've pinned to a closet door some sketches and clippings and I decide to do a painting of the door itself: a study of studies for an idea about an idea.

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Autobiography continues

The Burial of Mickey Mouse: Part 21

London, November. Autum leaves on the ground and I'm back to the single life with all its possibilities and all its fears. I have no money, I'm confused, sad, curious, excited. I gravitate towards Hampstead since I have a few friends there and I find a cheap bed-sitter in the neighbourhood of Swiss Cottage. Coin-meter for electricity, small gas fire to huddle in front of, shared bathroom down the hall. Here's an extract from my diary:

I wake up in a new room. Faded sepia wallpaper stained with strangers' stains, greasy cooking fingers, hair inexplicably stuck to the wall, remnants of strangers' lives hiding in bottom drawers, blonde hairpins, strangers' dust to be swept out and replaced by my dust. An English room, London room, Hampstead room, silent as the grave, grey birds perched on grey branches against the grey sky, melancholy with an un-modern sadness, a monochrome sadness, a romantic, barrel-organ kind of sound. And me, Natalie, in this room, far from my origins, gone the Paraguayan sun, the Mediterranean sun, the American assurance and all my busy kin-folk, gone the man that was my husband - was I ever married? Gone my childish games with God, building blocks for temples, all gone. Only myself and the room and my clock-ticking brain still caught in its routine convolutions, performing its trained seal tricks over and over again, slowing down now, aware that the audience is no longer watching.
I wish I could be swept by a monsoon wind, released from my hold on the everyday, taken over by vastness, by rage - not somebody else's, my own. Great white expanses of canvas upon which to imprison my vision now, not the next day but now, forget words rooms places faces upstairs downstairs receipts lists plans landladies jobs groceries clocks shampoo lipstick mirrors kisses heels clicking down the street the past the future the whole kitchen sink of it, overturn the table and really get going, crack the whip and watch the thundering hooves come charging in at my command and line themselves up for my brush.

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