Happenstance

I went to the Alice Neel exhibition at the Barbican with my poet friend yesterday.

There are too many glorious paintings to share but these two were favourites. Look at those colours, the red socks.

I'm very drawn to flashes of red at the moment, especially on grey/earthy backgrounds, which dates way back to the pages of The Red Balloon at my Granny's house, then the primary colours in Godard films like Pierrot le Fou, but more recently inspired by the sublime documentary Fire of Love, the story of volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft.

My friend asked what I was up to and I said things had been quiet in the shop, which seemed a common thread among various artist sellers groups on Facebook. I said I was at a bit of a crossroads, that I'd been painting - still life, muted colour, pared down and quiet.

Later she told me about Virginia Woolfe's essays on solitude and when I googled later, the first quote to pop up was this:

‘How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.’

I looked at my growing collection of paintings in progress on the wall…

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This is interruption no 1, brought about by jump-starting a long forgotten journal, missing my old blog and a reticence towards instagram. According to the Substack tips I'm meant to tell you what you can expect and when. All I can say is I will write when I feel like it. It'll be art/culture related, when I have a new collection to share or just when I notice something, like I did today.