to be consumed by love is not to understand it

I just need noise all the time, i can't stand the silence, even when i'm painting i have to listen to music, loud music. And when i tire of the music i listen to the radio, the talky shows on Radio 4 and the Jeremy Vine show. And even when i get tired of those sounds there is always the birds, the drills in the distance, the rain. I just can't stand the silence. It's worse at night, though i like the darkness (it's when the bluebird comes out to play), i love the night, i hate getting too tired to see the night through, but i must sleep. I hate wasteful times, sleeping, eating, when i can't do anything else but succumb to the needs of my body. I can't stand the silence though, i have to sleep with the radio on, or the tv, i know its a waste of electricity, but i don't use much during the day.

The paintings flow during the night time, that's why i like the winter, it's easier, it gets dark earlier, perfect conditions for creation really. Now the day's a slog. People think painter's want quiet, they want nice walks in the countryside, sit down with a canvas and paint the trees, not me. Only sunday painters like that, nothing wrong with sunday painters, but they do it to relax, cause they enjoy it. I'll do something else to relax; drive, write, sleep. To paint i want to be in the middle of it all, i want to live in the centre of Manchester or London, New York or Paris or... Bucharest, or wherever there  is lots going on. Where  i can feel a flood of people around me, and when i hide away, it feels like hiding. Here in Dudley everywhere is hidden.

I painted some more today, like every day. I'm really getting there, things are going well with the painting, it's a struggle, but the good kind. Not everything i come out with is good, but it all adds up, i learn something with each new painting, even if it's what not to do. I'm sure i'll forget it all again soon and make the same mistake somewhere down the line. I've been painting in a expressionist sort of way, i like that. The impressionists, the first major art group after the introduction of photography, they elevated the paint from the horrors of 'likeness'. Everyone wants painters to paint likenesses, nevermind if it has no soul or feeling, as long as it looks like what it's of. Well, impressionism was a starting point on the road to paint for the sake of paint, Impressionism still dealt with likenesses, but it was an attempt to make the world that we experience visible, the way our minds distort the light, our movements, lights movements, what even photography can't grasp. Post impression took that skill and made the inner feelings visible, and then Expressionism, to my mind, near enough dispensed with the visible altogether, it didn't give a fuck what it saw, the colours and shapes were an expression of feeling. I'm talking Kirchner, Munch, Soutine now, Bonnard, Grosz and Dix even. Until you get up to Baselitz, and the paint makes it's own world. That's where i am, i saw it in the face of the woman i painted yesterday, at the end of this writing. And i just realised that i wasn't interested in the likenesses at all, i wanted the paint, the composition should rely on the skill of the paint. I've been trying to make the composition perfect, and by doing that i end up painting it by rote, there's no need to paint it well, it's just illustration, because it's all in the composition... that's no way to paint. I need to paint so that if it's not painted well it all falls flat, so there's no safety net in the composition.

For what purpose? for what end point am i trying to achieve? There is no point, there is no ending, only a point at which i fall silent. Each person has to make his own way, paint for his own sake, it's not science, there is no progression from generation to generation, each person has to start from scratch. We make art like we live, and the next generation will not learn from our art anymore than they will from our way of living... to be consumed by love is not to understand it.

"My contest is only with myself: to do it right, with power and force and delight and gamble. Otherwise, forget it."

Charles Bukowski, The Captain is out to Lunch, and the Sailors have taken over the Ship.

Now, go away.