Change to Move

So I have started "Altering" the books.  It is an odd activity, although I haven't ever been very careful of my books, I do respect them in my way.  Can't bear to throw them away, at the very most donate to Charity.  But now here I go taking a book and drawing, scribbling on it even.

 In my case I see it as a loosening activity.  I have chosen 3 books that appealed to my imagination and am hoping that I will be stimulated within their pages to transform them into "my" sketch books.
Thus the Mother book will look at what it means to be a woman and a mother.....
The little red book is household hints which i think is going to lead me down the path of examining expectations, cliches, assertions, about how we should behave, that kind of thing. 
And Rothko's notebook will help me develop arty farty thoughts, tho the following second pages mentioned "father" and I had to record 2 phrases I remember my father saying.............
It is all meant to be informal and to knock out my self -censor "is that good enough, worth saying, rubbish?" 
It doesn't matter, I shall just doodle hopefully, but with a focus that comes from outside and not feel I am wasting time or trying too hard.......

 I did this acrylic painting this morning.  A person jumps off our local bridge rather regularly.  Recently Him Indoors/Retired Person was driving home only to find the police shutting the road to protect the body in the road.  

Later I went back to take photos of the sad bunches of flowers left for his memory and have wanted to do a painting ever since.  This is the first draft, but i suspect it won't change much as it was already in my mind exactly like this.

the journey is the destination

Have been having a bit of a go at this oil painting [in between daughter and g'son cavorting around]
Also have started three [count them!] Altered Books. 
One is a kiddies book Are You My Mother [lots of undercurrants there]  next is a 1930s advice little hardback called Hints and Wrinkles [ housework and dog defleaing] and the last is a facsimile of A Notebook  by Rothko - The Artist's Reality, Philosophies of Art [lots of opportunities for iconoclasm and pontificating as the mood takes me.
So far all I have achieved is to Gesso out some pages so I can doodle .................still it's a start.

Thinking is easier than Doing

 ArtSkool has set us a summer project which i think I may explore thru the medium of dance.......as they say.  The above pic [dunno where it comes from which will not please the tutors] is very satisfying and I hope to paint something like, if I can choose an approach...........guess it is based on old Matisse' painting

 I would like to introduce some of the whimsy of Eileen Cooper to some of the work

 These figures that I have made recently will dance round a ruined tower I think.........

 Magdalena Abromovitch [I think I may have missed an itch or two] does these monumental figures, but the sculpture room at ArtSkool has a very laddish hard edged atmosphere which I think may be intimidating, making figures at home is possible but transportation is a problem.

 Kiki Smith has many and various explorations of the female

 Munch is not too hopeful in his Dance of Death...............

 Picasso says just get on with it!!

arrivals

Only thing that hasn't arrived is the sun.

sitting ducks

atrium

The sun is shining but I have got a bit dull.  End of term I suppose, glad it is finishing, sad it is finishing. No more ArtSkool till October!  Stupid.
We are putting up our first years exhibition in the Atrium, 3 floors of light filled tower, work gets a bit lost in the brightness to be honest.

 Fortunately mine is quite large and insistently black and white.....but between two toilets.

Tutor suggested I give Big Nuddey some hair, which was annoying, but I think maybe he was right.  I have named her End of Days. Other tutor suggested I left the chair there as part of the installation, tutors are like that.

I am very tired and irritable, don't know if it is old age or justifiable after getting up too early for a whole semester. 

Went in for my last portrait class on Friday and really would have liked to stick my big bad hog hair brush ........somewhere, don't know where, just tired and bad tempered.     Mother sat for 3 weeks, reading her kindle [one of Ann Cleeves crime stories set in the Shetlands] and was very patient, which possibly also wound me up. 

Also some of the other students are very good, so I feel very small..........

Had a long chat with the sculpture tutor, which consoled me briefly, [he is very attractive] till having taken 2 paces down the corridor I realised had solved nothing at all.  He should be a politician.

I can't make up my mind whether to do painting and sculpture next year, or just painting.  The sculpture room is very laddish, and the tutor loves chatting to the chaps, and admiring their welding. I need a regular sit down tutorial and other students to network with, to focus me and gee me up.

I have been isolating myself lately, trying to get work finished, plus watching TV and sleeping when ever poss. so maybe the summer holidays have come just in time.

Have started stitching some pieces for the exhibition in July, soothing running stitches.