Cinematecii Romane

Back in England, and i brought back with me a programme of films from the Romanian Cinematech, here follows a list of films to be shown in just one week there!

Vivre Sa Vie
Manhattan Murder Mystery
Bande a part
Les Carabiniers
Ciuleandra
Ministry of Fear
Siegfried
M
Fury
Topkaki
Western Union
Citizen Kane
Little Big Man
Despre Alta Mama
Escapada
The Ox-Bow Incident
Love Finds Andy Hardy


The prints are usually in a bad condition, i went to see a copy of Shanghai Express while i was there, and there were frequent dips in sound and odd jumps. But, that is a wonderful list of films, for any cinema, and most cities in England only have one cinema showing old films, and that's usually only once or twice a week, and they usually don't have very many people attending unless it's a classic like It's a Wonderful Life. In Bucharest the cinema was pretty full.

heading to home (no.1)

Have just packed and am now scanning pirate bay for any last minute downloads. Leaving bucharest at 7:10 this evening, arrive in Budapest tomorrow morning, Munich tomorrow evening, Paris on Sunday morning and back in England by Sunday afternoon. 5 trains in all to get back home, all being well. But i have some paper and a pen and i intend to draw some on the way back. The comic, jules and crispin, and something for a submission to a magazine.

Also have my ipod full up with stuff, and a couple of books - adrian mole, david thomson, where's wally!, and Sherlock Holmes.

Old Poetry

Earlier this year my poetry was featured in an online magazine based in Manchester, Blankpages. I'm still pretty pleased about it, and attempt to share it wherever i go, so here's the link - http://www.blankmediacollective.org/images/uploads/blankpages20.pdf

Please look and then come back here and comment/praise/slag me off:)
Enjoy!

New Comics

I leave Bucharest on Friday evening and arrive back in England on Sunday evening. Last week i handed the keys back to the studio i've been renting, since then, not being able to paint, i've been working on my website and comics/illustration work. The website being - www.wastelandnumberseven.com - the main reason for my dissapearance off here over the last few months. On it i've tried to include all my work over the past 4 years, which is taking quite a long time.

The comic i'm working on (alongside the ongoing, 'as weekly as possible' www.julesandcrispin.com that i create with Mihaela Precup) is autobiographical, although attempts to play around with that idea of memory. Its about my first trip to france, a day trip.. and so far is called The Ferry, the Nipple and the Beer. I also have ideas for other projects, but it's difficult without any money coming. I've been trying to get to grips with certain design packages like photoshop, illustrator, indesign, and try and apply to jobs and competitions and commissions. I keep on being told i need to make artist friends, form alliances, but i don't know, i've never been great at that.

Here's a couple of examples of recent work from Bucharest,
enjoy!:)

The Jitters

ahem.. cough, cough cough cough. it's been a hwhile.

Landscape,

window,

painting,

photograph,

film,

computer.

i mean i guess there are other things with screens, animation, but that's similar principles to film, mobile phones, but that works on similar principles to computer's, so i tried to pick just the bare essentials. Because knowing what painting originated from is a good starting point into making original work. so i tried to pick all things with frames, and screens, i was in two minds about whether to include theatre as well, as it has a kind of frame, that being the curtain, and i could include it, i'm not attempting a definitive list, just something which makes me think... but theatre seems to me more attuned to film than painting.

So, the Landscape - the actual world out there. Windows - still able to see the world, but now it's slightly removed from you. Mirrors - now you can see yourself, and your place in the world. Painting - you can attempt a faithful reproduction of the world, or get lost in the paint. you can alter the world, copy it, attempt to improve it, or express it, and yourself using a mirror. the world becomes a world. Photograph - a near perfect visual reproduction of the world, only not where it's supposed to be, and not the same size as it's supposed to be, and it's not moving.. and although it doesn't want to admit it, it might not be as faithful as it first claims. Film - a photograph that moves, the world somewhat removed from where we are being in the midst of the blackness of the auditorium. though if the film world is reality, then why am i sitting with complete strangers? trying to hear it over their crunching of popcorn, and whispering, and groping. Computers - like the photograph and unlike the cinema i can hide it away, it's mine, all the things on it are in my personal space. i can see the world through it, see many worlds on it, travel into deepest space, it turns mirrors the right way round via a camera, i can watch films, talk to friends, if it started to breathe for me and i could feel through it as well then i mightn't miss this world at all. this has it's own laws, rules, reality , in which i can express myself, or a different me, accordingly.

Painting does seem quite a way down the evolutionary ladder doesn't it, but i try not to think of it like that, rightly or wrongly. painting is different, there isn't really a betterment, each step is simply different to the last one, comes with alternate ways of viewing the world, new pros and cons.. painting allows you to express yourself, a computer allows you to organise your week, a mirror allows you to comb your hair, not only do each of them work on different levels, they are almost unrelated in day to day life, except for this, admittedly quite flimsy, idea of the frame and screen. But the point is it makes you think, for instance, frames, a window, what do you do with a window, if a painting was like a window, or a door? would that painting take you places, allow you to see far off lands without actually going there? or would a mirror best suit your way of painting, do you reflect yourself, expressionistically maybe, the world as your world, altered. or finding your place in it.

painting is for me a way of summing up. thats why i think it's important to look into different subjects, like science, language, cinema, dance, opera, pop culture, geography, history. painting isn't just about painting, to me it's taking life, every single aspect, and displaying it, talking about it. The idea that a painting can 'sum up' life is stupid, at the very least. But that's the way i think about it, as a sort of binding together of different ends, good ideas come from pushing two already formed yet opposing and far reaching ideas together, nothing else. it's a fake, you're not creating something out of thin air, just responding with pre-formed elements. It's a jigsaw, as is everything else, which gives a general air of creation, but it's not really something new, you've just rearranged things.

and if you don't see any of this in my paintings? why should i care. these thoughts are here to help push my paintings along, the next paintings, i don't constantly stew over what i've already painted. i reflect of course, see if i can steal an idea from my past self, redo something better. and as this constant reflecting and redoing and researching goes on, you hopefully find a few strands running through the work, things which you can identify, or someone else identifies for you, which is yours. which comes from you. and you will have made your mark. but you borrow from everything, without worry, without jitters.

4 new paintings

apple head, back packing man, reminded me of a painting by bacon, of a painting by van gogh, destroyed in the war. of van gogh wandering through corn or wheat fields, carrying his easel and a bag on his back. Whispering, confiding in fruit, lost.

a woman, appearing to be an old woman, but not intended to be. At first it was a young woman, a lovely young woman, but once i'd started to draw the folds of material draped over her neck, i just couldn't let go of the age or the plumpness. Staring through a camera at a blank, white space, as if projected, like a cinema screen.

pain. a man drives a gardening fork through his foot, and stares down at it while touching, rubbing himself. Not many people have noticed the rubbing part. I doubt i wanted people to notice it, but bright colours do tend to set up a precursor or a rhetoric of how something should be viewed.

i don't know why i painted her blonde. I don't know any blonde's (i just wondered "that can't be true!?" but actually it is, i can't think of any blonde's i know). But the colour seemed to fit in with the rest of the painting, the whiteness of the dress (a bride?) she was lying flat on her face at first, and there was a snowy landscape around her, with square red houses in the background, atop a hill. But this makes me feel better, her inside, the space is more manageable. and her fingers pulsing through her hair.

inner landscapes

I have less words to write now i'm happier