THINKING OUT LOUD

It's not like anger at certain persons or situations or concepts. Those are pretty clear. Anger with myself is a tightly tangled mess of steel wool threads. Yeah yeah there's the LoveYourself blah blah blah and I do. I think I'm an adorable creature. My mother called me that in French, une adorable créature. But there is still anger with myself and no chocolate-covered blindfolds can erase it. Maybe it's necessary. Legit.

FEBRUARY GREETING

Happy first of February!

THE HARRY SCANDAL SUMMARISED

SCANDAL! SHOCKHORROR! OUTRAGE!

Harry admits he and the other Royals are just like everybody else!

They are not Superhumans!

They behave very very badly sometimes!

Quite often!

They have family fights!

They... they...they...are just ordinary rich people in a palace!

Harry says all this in public! On television! In a book!

The Palace has not commented.

Draw your own conclusions.

Bravo Harry! And Meghan too. Whistleblowers are always maligned, especially when their whistling is blowing holes in the sacrosanct walls of powerful institutions.

It's an unbelievable number but it's real and it's here.

NEW START, NEW YEAR

A spirit-boosting visit yesterday from my sparkling friend Steven Appleby cartoonist par-excellence. I painted his portrait in 2019 then pandemic etc. intervened. But meanwhile DRAGMAN, his sincerely terrific graphic novel, was published and has been attracting success like a magnet, deservedly, because it combines a wicked sense of humour and touching self-analysis within an inventive, multi-dimensional plot featuring endearing characters drawn with apparently effortless ease and delectable colour. I love my copy of this book even more now that Steven spontaneously decorated its front page just for me! Great start to the New Year and I'm feeling encouraged to go full puff-puffing steam ahead with my graphic novel Double Entendre Go go Eilatan!

I just realised that I probably should have written 'she' instead of 'he' when speaking of Steven. But you know what? Steven doesn't go by the rules and neither do I.

My portrait of Steven Appleby,2019

WHO IS THIS?

We're so used to seeing the various patterns in which other people's facial features arrange themselves and interpreting them to signify something, almost as if they are posters in a familiar language. But do you ever get a strange, detached WHO IS THAT? feeling when seeing yourself in a mirror? I often do. Here's "my" face in a mirror just now, taken with an ordinary (not-phone) camera. This is simply about looking in a mirror on an ordinary December 26th evening and taking a photo. It's not about knowing or not knowing thyself.

SEASONAL LOVE

So much grief, misery, pain, suffering everywhere in the world right now it seems almost sacrilegious to offer words like 'merry' and 'happy' so I'll just post this image because love and care and tenderness survive and that's what I wish to all of you, my dear friends, wherever you are.

WINTER GIFTS

Snow, trees, houses and light collaborating in creating artworks for all to see and enjoy, free of charge.

NEW PORTRAITS

Italy came back to me in the shape of my niece Selene and her husband Gian Luca. We had a warm and wonderful four days together and they took home the portraits I finished last week of Mariam and Emanuele, their children who are in Milan and haven't yet seen these paintings.

1.Emanuele. NdA. Acrylic on canvas 12 x 16in. November 2022

2. Mariam with Lili the dog. NdA. Acrylic on canvas 12 x 16in. November 2022

3. Selene Guerrieri and Gian Luca Martinelli at my place, 27th November 2022

NOTHING?

I've been thinking about nothing. I don't mean not thinking about anything. I mean Nothingness, le Néant, emptiness. Here's a summary of what my thoughts have been playing with.

There's no such thing as nothing. What is philosophically or metaphorically or literally considered to be Nothing is actually the gaps or pauses between Something.

Look at the word NOTHINGNESS for instance: see the negative spaces between the letters?
That's the 'stuff'which gives each letter and the whole word its shape. An energy pushing and pulling space-stuff to form shapes.

Say the word aloud: the pauses your breath takes between letters or syllables, aren't they examples of the same energy translated into sound, like the pauses between notes sung or played on musical instruments?

We generally focus on the shape of things before we notice the space around them. But what if it's the other way round?

Suppose it's Nothingness which moulds shapes?

I made a rough initial sketch of this exploration.