On a very basic level, most people just put pictures or art on the on the wall to cheer themselves up or because the don’t like blank walls” said Patrick.

“May be because there is a hole in the wall and they want to hide it, like a bandaid or a mask” I respond.

Thoughts –

Staring in to a big black hole, wearing a mask how it must be to be a painting.

A painting fixes something, heals you, hides you, well thats better than useless.

This morning started with one of those conversations and I’m left wondering where I am and why.

Maybe be I can locate myself in my work – A question that has been haunting me.

I am floating, dreaming, looking, seeing – trying to put words to my thoughts and the things I see beauty, magic, I look into my world around me to understand. Where am I? You are seeing my world though my pictures I am in your head. You complete the process.

I appreciate your attention. Someone else looking at my pictures creates a link, my experience becomes real, it is not just mine. I feel a sense of a mission completed.

I have shared – although this is a command that we are instructed to comply with from an early age, I also think it a healthy human desire, which is part of the human condition. This does not mean what we share is always healthy.

I do feel an obligation to share the positive and seek out subjects that could be nurturing.

There was a lovely point in our artists talk at Camberwell with Catherine Anyango Grunewald when she was asked a question and she disinterested into giggles saying, “ golly that’s what I ask people when I am interviewing them and here, I am and I just can’t answer that question on the spot, but I am going to come back to you later.”

I liked the honesty and integrity.

I love her methods and application of layers, her words drew me in, she kindly explained how she used pencils and fixative to layer the carbon and graphite in ways that give texture and a variation to the surface of her paper. Simple materials raised to create high art dealing with emotions, politics and questions.

Honesty and integrity – that was what our reading talk was about.

11.30 – 13.0 Reading group: What Lies Beneath: Amie Dickie, Dawn Mellor and Goth Pop Art with Lois Rowe

The text can be found here: https://search.proquest.com/openview/d8a0953d80db14c3703b2c2de5bf6cc9/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2035804

The talk was very interesting, although I really was not taken with either artists work, I appreciated what they were trying to do. I found both collections very niche, often a complaint I have about art shows. I found the written piece not very original and the question it was asking rather irrelevant to my own interests. The main discovery was that it was written a while back when all the subjects were new proving that everything does move on and we do learn if subjects are interrogated. Masks and IDs featured within the discussion. To interrogate further other than to realise this seems fun but unnecessary. So, one for the notes.