Welcome to the inside of my head…..go now …..or stay….you were warned

OK! So you are here. This is a personal collection of ‘ a gathering me up’ which I do from time to time and in some way or other. This latest gathering started January 2014. I used to write on paper. fill boxes. hang things on walls or put on plinths, then the blog started seriously October 2013. I Still do a diary, but,now it seems I am gathering myself here as  an  extension of all that has gone before so far. So the brush starts here now. Any writing beyond this point in varying degrees has special meaning to me and is the stuff that feeds me. It is the reason.

This page has been, is  and will be constantly reworked as art takes me.  As such it  says a  bit more about me, a weird resume or personal  art statement snapshot that no one sees, or will particularly understand. But I don’t care……….it kind of files me away so that I know where I am. I am a compulsive filer of mess and paper. I do a lot of rewriting if I have to. Saves me getting lost

Index Map and acknowledgements

I am afraid no direct  links yet  but everything is here somewhere:

1 London a place for flowers and buying shoes…… Uncle Spike the first person I ever spoke to on this blog kindly asked me to write something for him related to the Christmas season the good and the bad bits! So I took the opportunity to dig up an old essay of mine about an artist called Hulusi who fascinated me, actually blinded me. The title I now give the piece I wrote then is called  ‘London a place for flowers and buying shoes’ and is about  the  experience I had the day of the Mustafa Hulusi exhibition in 2011 called The Empty, Near East showing at Max Wigrams. It was a two year old essay(by the time it came on here) but  Mustafa  Hulusi has  had a drip drip affect on my own recent work (about ‘hanging on, being in isolation, and looking at neglect, things it seems no one else bothers much with  and the beauty to be found often but missed, the stories, forgotten in the rush) and then whoosh! flowers ! Certainly Mustafa’s  exhibition work here dealt with all that! (The photos on the ‘about me’ page were taken on that jaunt to see his work and so have been with me here since September 2013 when I first started this blog, more seriously by the October, although the artist had been rather longer in my head.  

2 Meet me by the pole….the first  tentative ‘poem’ I ever wrote. Its about my field  and so to me is special.
This is a poem I wrote about a sunrise I experienced for the first time in its entirety with a new camera (recently). It  blew me away! and I have had a date with the sun rise ever since although the sun doesn’t always manage to burn the clouds  and the sun doesn’t simply rise every day….. you have to catch it….. it has a will!!  Anyway,it was  this  first time I wanted to write about…… how I flew out of the house new camera in hand at the sight of  a bank of pink cloud over my house. And how I wished anyone was there with me, or at least willing to wake and run with me. I felt stupidly childish ‘oooing and ‘ahing chomping on a camera that knew more about what it was doing  than me. 179/200 turned out ace and I think the light lit up my head that day and it hasn’t left.(I haven’t had  that thing called SAD since (hating early dark evenings) One sunrise can last a few days with me! I have put a few of my other sunrise images on the blog but really wanted to write about this  first ‘framed’ experience so I made a start with a few lines  put it down and then continued to write  the rest during  napowrimo  2014. The thirty poems in all (some in a few words) I wrote that month are at the end of the piece as links; as well as the particularly treasured comments from someone (a poet) who joined me, that blew in  like green beautiful meaningful leaves, not strays. I have  gathered them up and re- wrapped them here. And this is the thing  I represent this happening in my head by a mist that drifts, it makes no sense but there it is………….

3 Day 28….Was some kind of artistic process which  led me to put a word placed in a later line into the above poem. Suddenly my poem became complete! Thank you to……… 

 4 Mark  who also gave me ‘his’ poem about a vision of morning melting into the night, or the other way round, that is written exquisitely and gently. It is beautiful and can also be found  exactly where Mark placed it . It is also another place. The poem reads like a continuum to the aforesaid and takes my breath when ever  I read it. There is a multi layering with the word  ‘follow’ It muddles me and delights me! Strangely, although the poem I think was given to me I feel that I have stolen it …….and have had to fight my way back to my field wondering where it all this stuff should go without it all  getting buried  or hung  out to dry, both states would alter all of  it’  What a problem! I think I am halfway there.The idea Mist helps

5 My poem which talks to the moon  as a  response to the above poem. I wish I could  say that this was my considered response to 4. But its not. It reeled out. I was bewitched.  Being bewitched  is now a new part of me……..  In a glorious mist  ever since …. 

6 Miracles  written by Walt Whitman  a poem ( a gift to me by the poet at 4 who doesn’t hand it out aimlessly.) The words regard simple things as being the most important of all, which they are. How did you know I would love it.. ……..

7 Then Emma, who is she…. still here…. quietly more than ever giving me strength.Perhaps more than anything an anagram and then some..  I said too much.

8 Advice Column. Every journal has a problem page.This is about Beech leaves….. A poem about the genuine problem beech hedging leaves presents to owners. As a
sagatairius I am stuck with their continual autumn so I understand  them. The wire face used to hang by the door, but fell down and has proved very useful  in catching the daily swirl on the step (very efficiently). It sorts the Leaves which  can come in many colours and sizes.

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‘ I can still draw…..but still finding my voice’ ………

No one is ever invited here as such. You have to find me, As an artist I am obliged  to take the risk of being seen and some things and ideas and statements seem more personal than others. But place and declare I must. It makes the thing, the stuff I do, the paint under my finger nails art! Everything I have ever done in the name of art has been seen sooner or later, shown or sold. Everything has been on show!This is the internet so there is no place to hide, but I want to hide. I am always a risk that I will be found  so it suits me to tuck me away…. However  art is also about a journey of discovery  for the voyeur  What a problem for me ! When every day you mostly want to hide. So I just hope I am not found but this is legitimately being on show ! So this is my place ( a virtual studio rather than work studio I suppose) where I discover myself and this is where anyone  can  discover me in the middle of things most of the time, or can be directed to my art that needs to be turned into art, even if you take no notice. Its feels a bit like talking to myself, and jumping if someone appears. None the less Here I can thank people for taking a slice of my brain away and giving me part of theirs and to say to others who popped their head in that you don’t have to acknowledge me or even tell me you called . You don’t  even have to like me but you are Welcome here especially if you got this far and (I think) I am glad you came…….Thank you!……………   .