After spending a few days in London you will notice bricks – everywhere and in all colors, it became an obsession to me and I took alot of photos. Not sure why there are so many bricks there but I know the great fire of London had something to do with it. You can see that there is beauty in every brick – in some it just takes longer to see. They are all set in a pattern known as the English Bond.

I never seen so much art in my life -
There is something lovely and mysterious about Gauguin
Nothing has been over rated with the Van Goghs
and Barcelona loves Gaudi
Dali means alot less to me than when i was 13
Miro uses nice greens and my shoes remind me now of Miro
I will never understand how Bruegel stuck it out
Wish I saw more Valesquese paintings
Still not moved an iota by Francis Bacon
And there was some thing that blew me away
about Cezanne’s card players.

Walking the busy streets of London, and it keeps reminding me, of a Leon Kossof painting of the muted colours and people walking in London. It sometimes seems as somebody has gone a turned the contrast down here. But then you notice how the colour does really come out, looking at the English back garden, honestly there is something greener about the grass and the fences are warmer. I think it is because everything is half wet so the color shows up more, not sure…. Also thinking about how intuitive the brain is, how it involuntary controls/directs things, that while hundreds of people walk passed each other, our weight and feet are shifting slightly every moment to avoid the body weight that is coming at a similar speed towards us the whole journey home and it’s all done while thinking is that person a tourist, and why did i turn down this street called googde.

Something creepy about being a tourist. Meaning you cant just look and look, it is so indulgent and mindless to stare, you have to give back a bit…trying to blend in and see things from the inside.  Once I came really close to getting paint all over the carpet of a UNESCO world heritage site, and it was 5 times my age.  Ive always wondered what would happen in such cases (do i pay?), like when my kid nearly broke a set of Perceval/Boyd potteries (displayed waist high) ……. I wont talk about it any more.

There are 2 ways to see things when drawing from life, from the out side in /meaning turning things into lines – out lines and a line is a very personal thing. The other way is from the inside – less personal but paradoxical, it keeps telling you – what you thought was black is not black and what you see as white is not white. And you see the way you see things eg a glass cup you realize how smart your brain/eyes are & you can’t realize this until you try and draw via staring. - But lines are beautiful things so we do both.

Puking:
Suddenly in an English garden
hard in a English toilet
under pressure in a British airport
and on a plane.
In a Spanish airport
in the lobby of the hotel condado
and in the hotel room.
I’m finding it hard to sleep in Barcelona,
and I dont speak Spanish no more…..

A hang over is the cells from the tip of of your nose to the edge of your feet telling you, that you better off dead, and that you never appreciated what it meant or felt like just to be alive, and simply wash the dishes and earn some wage.  -If only we felt the joys of just being alive and what a pleasure it all is.   And then we forget, and forget this over and over and over again.

zz z zz z.. z..z.

                 . .   .  . .__ 
                            t____       ___
                            l  __ l          ___
                             L        ,l                                           
                               L      ,l__p     O
                                 L     gnight   loyl  
                                      L                                          
                                            zz z zz z.. z..z.
—
                

Thinking about how somebody can live or spend years of thier life comfortably in a small location as we all do. We spend chunks of our lives in certain spaces ie our houses. A little space has so much to offer a individual that he could spend his whole life in this space.
Yet when we move through space, as we travel in our car we travel through the distance of properties, we traverse space so quickly, it totally defies the importance of space, though it was nothing and so insignificant as though it was something that has almost become a non thing/entity,nothing. And im just thinking about the difference between these two states…..

A while back when there was a Sidney Nolan exhibition on at the Art Gallery of NSW. There was a small brochure printed, I had one somehow from somewhere. On the cover was photograph of him in the studio and very far in the background was painting leaning against something it was very insignificant in the image. However when I saw this painting in the background of this photo I was totally locked in with it and inspired about something in terms of shape and how the paint was to go down. I went to the exhibit and I really liked the show but I was more inspired totally from this image that was about 2cm or less.

I find this happens often, another example  I was pulled over on the side of the road (im not sure why) and i was looking through the window of a restaurant, quite far back on the side wall i saw an image which was so intriguing to me. From the blurriness of distance I saw a smallish painting of a woman sanding on a beach the dark blue ocean intersecting her and a sky above, from the top of the sky was a huge dog leaping down from the sky with its paws outstretched above her, what a great painting, the figure of the lady and the dog from the sky. I told my wife in the car that I needed to take a closer look at this and I quickly went in side to see it for myself, as I approached the image, it started to dissemble itself and suddenly I was looking at a generic image of a rose..

Out working thinking about my grandfather who is buried say 200 meters away, I’ve only visited once the plaque that bears his name- I’m so busy and there is do much to do again today, as I speed away from the gates of the cemetery.

People are so funny =, some one can paint 1000 paintings, pour him self into each of them, and she or he can then win a little art prize and it means more to most people most of the time. = Table 18, from a wedding recently:

Jewish Wedding after seeing quote from hitler:   ”Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized”.

Here is a photo of my paintbox and palette, im always trying to make myself lighter when outside, so no tubes and no squeezing tubes takes place:

I received the art spectrum prize, good feeling to be able to open all these boxes of paint, thank you AS. Opening the 500ml buckets removing the lid smelling the saffron oil. I just stuck my thumb in the Naples yellow. This seems to be the color that the sun turns things in to, there’s dark green which would be a the colour of grass in the shade, mixed with naples yellow the grass is now in the sun. The black tar road often seems to me to be a kind of darkened naples yellow, reflecting off the black, whens the suns around…

Having these weird sensations while driving and i will actually feel it, that in the deeper part of my upper thigh, all of a sudden a large crouching spider appears in a sort of spontaneous way as if from nowhere, until I push the feeling away of these dammed thoughts.

I found a drawing on the floor in my house, (because the kids go though things when we are sleeping, and bring things out), that I havent seen for years. Interesting process on a clear plastic sheet, I used a needle to scratch lines into it, then I rubbed black ink or something and it stained the scratched lines, like a tattoo.

Found a stop - called Johnson’s lookout, looking down over all those trees, seeing pale yellow greens, yellow greens, warm yellow greens, copper yellow greens, off yellow greens, neon yellow greens, suicide bomber greens, blood greens, bright red greens, light blue greens, purple greens, warm purple greens, cobalt greens, Turquoise greens, purply blue greens, ultramarine greens, party greens, warm brown greens, dark brown greens and black greens…….

I won the oil painting prize in the Waverley art Prize..spoke with Wendy Sharpe, she was friendly & warm person, and with Mayer of Waverley Mrs Sally Betts:

Some times you can be somewhere where everything seems so paintable, and its not raining and it can make you sick. Reminds me of the story of Hansel and Gretel when they came to the house that was entirely edible, and how much did they eat?

Always looking for a place to wipe the paint off my brush, if it is not my shirt the next place happens to be the carpet on the floor. I would have liked it to look like my shirt.

When in the streets the main thing that grabs me to paint something, I would say is colours. In a park one day walking around in circle for quite a while and then I saw a bright yellow bus, it was a warm yellow. I got so excited that I ran to get my things frantically, just to have a go at that yellow (which is my favorite colour). After about 5 mins, the engine made that roar and it continued on, I watched it swing around leave the park and fade away. It could be a black dog with a red collar, a football team in blue and white strips, or a pink building, these are a few of my favorite things.

Won a bid on ebay for a heater, but we only realized much later, the heater was in the Northern Beaches which was a “big” drive,  so we made a trip out of from it. Got the heater & found a beach called Dee Why (a beautiful beach) and started painting there.

I found that Phthalo blue has to be the most saturated paint around, (contains the most dye) so dont forget to put the lid on it when you go out painting unless you want blue and black hands. I kept getting this feeling because of where I was standing that there was always someone standing behind me and watching me and I’d turn around and there was no one there, it must of been from shadows that lingered after the people walked away. Also its funny to see that when one person does stand and watch you, it makes more people stand and watch and so forth until it gets creepy and you have to kind of break it all up, to introduce ourselves.

@ Westfield shopping centre Bondi Junction. Painted on the the top floor. Looking downish. I always loved this idea of painting around such an environment because the advertising is so available ,images of giant faces wearing sunglasses, and figures in posses etc, a perfect reason to paint more and more faces. After about 25 mins was approached by the security guards, it was so obvious to them that I wasn’t permitted to paint there, “unless you have a special pass” so I had to pack up and leave. A few days later a guy committed suicide from that top level.

I was asked by a friendsfriendfriend to donate a painting to a charity exhibition – for Africa at the global gallery, gave them 3. It came the time to auction the paintings. I stood there and my painting was brought in upside down & then they slowly turned around in front of my eyes, until it remained on the side, to say some thing would have been even harder, they were all taken.. (good ridden’s i guess).

I have decided to make this blog after painting now “outside” for about 6 months (since the start of 2010). Experiencing so many situations and thoughts to myself, I thought it would be a good idea?.