the actual powerbook wot I bought on Ebay

5th March 2007
At studio, watching Logan's Run, again, and doing some web stuff for the other, er, stuff which I mentioned before doing. I made two more of the 99p paintings the other day, and today is the first chance I have had to get in and see them. So it is good to be here. Still, now I have got my amazing new powerbook that I bought on ebay to keep me occupied and not do any actual paintings!!! It's the last gen of the powerpc chips that Apple did before caving in and going intel. It works well with the apps I have - some came with the machine, and I'm not supposed to use them. The old machine is in a pretty poor stat of health now, and now that I have finally transfered all those other websites that I am doing apart from this one have been transfered over I no longer need it. It did it's job well I guess. The don't last long these computers, do they? This is my sixth.

There was a lunar eclipse last night. It was lovely. I could just see it of my window, it was deep orange. It was great watching it gradually change. It was much slower than the total eclipse of the sun in Cornwall in '99 which seem to rush by at the shadow whizzed over at zillions of miles per hypersecond. That was so eerie because the sun wasn't visble, but the sky went really weird and fluid and I thought that maybe one could see more of the shadow because the clouds were making it more visible. They seemed to churn and gurgle as the the shadow advanced over the planet. The sea went wild and the light was really strange. But you could really feel being part of a celestial event. That you were aware of what was happening.

That is what is amazing about human beings. We have worked out how to anticipate when these eclipses will occur. That means that I knew what was happening (that the Moon was crossing over the Sun and therefore the Moon's shadow was going to cross over the Earth because it is directly between the Earth and the Sun) and therefore I could really appreciate what was happening. I could comprehend what was going on. I had an explanation why everything just went completely awesome. If I had had no warning, I could have freaked. And the animals and the birds did act as if they had no explanation why the environment they inhabited just suddenly went completely weird and then went back to normal again.

Tintin knew when there was an total eclipse of the sun in "Prisoners of the Sun" - one of my all time favourite books, well, that doubled with the "Seven Crystal Balls" which preceeded it. The incas in "Prisoners of the Sun" were totally astonished and freaked that Tintin had chosen the date of his execution at exactly the same time that the sun disappeared from the sky. So they revered him and set him free.

So they just said on the telly that a lunar eclipse was considered bad luck in the olden days, but that was precisely because they had no idea what was going on! They freaked as the full moon got slowly eaten up and blotted out. What was going on? It is weird. It is an omen.

Maybe it is. There is always negative, nasty stuff going on out there in the world according to the information I receive. I just don't want it going on near me. I hate bad vibes and things. I like being nice. Nice is good. Nice is easy. Nice is just sooo much easier, I find. Nasty is hard. To be. Nasty eats you up. If you try to be nice to other folks, I find they are generally nice to me. Being nasty all the time must be exhausting - all that negative energy being spat out all the time. I am sure it's true. If one can try to chill and be easy and try to respect and understand other people and not put up barriers then life is so much more relaxed, I'm sure.

We modern folks do have an idea what is going on, scientifically, and can appreciate what is actually happening. I don't think it means bad lack. I think it is just an amazing natural event. I do think it is particularly awesome and special that our moon is exactly at a certain distance to blot the sun out in a solar eclipse. Now there surely is something cosmic about that. Isn't there? Is it a juxta-postition designed by some alien beings / gods / god who is able to create a solar system so that these cosmological events can occur?

Or are solar eclipses just not that rare an event in the almighty magnitude that is the universe/multiverse? They are simply quite common astrological events occuring in the formation of most of the regular solar systems in our galaxy. Let alone all those other quidzillion galaxies there are out there. Who knows, but do these celestial events really have influences on our lives? I doubt it. I think you can make your own luck. You can make things better for yourself if you try. Sure, bad things happen, friends and relatives die, illness occurs, people get ugly and violent. You just gotta deal with it as best you can in your own particular situation. If you don't like where you are, or who the person you've become, try doing something about it, if you feel you are able. No one else can change your life as much as you can.

Also, are all the millions, if not billions, of people who were under the lunar eclipse are they all going to suffer bad luck? Doubt it very much. Well if they believe they will, they will probably subconsciously steer events so that negative outcomes can occur. Anything that is unfortunate, accidental or depressing can be contributed to these portents. Who knows if the people of days gone by did know more than us modern folks? Who knows anything, I just don't want to stain my head thinking about negative stuff like that. I just think my life is too short to worry about things like that - got better stuff to do. I want to be a positive person. It is tough sometimes but I think if you have good friends and a family, like I do, you're are a really lucky person, and it's good to know that, yes, other people actually like me. It really helps.

So I got rid of the beard. And the longish hair. I am now all shorn for spring. For the first time ever I have had I shave at the barbers, using a cutthoat razor. It is weird to not be beardy-weirdy again. I was developing a rather dashing Wild West, musketeer facial foliage thing going on in the end. I was happily twirling my 'tache and tweaking my beard. My beard was even fairer than my hair - which has been under a hat, that thinsulate hat that I've had for yonks now. And know the beard are gone. I did it on a whim. In my lunchbreak. My face has never felt so soft and unhairy since before puberty. It was amazing. To have done to and to feel so baby faced and cherubic. After the shave, at work work, I was compared to young guy called N, who's 19! Not bad for a middle-aged chap like me. hehe

11th March 2007
At studio, watching Mutiny on the Bounty, again, and Fletcher Christian (Marlon Brando) has just seized the ship.

I usually have the telly on - I use it a bit like the radio. I listen to it more than watch it. Quite often I am sitting on the sofa bed (the one I inherited from my grandparents) looking at the wall that has the painting(s) I am working on.

At the moment it has all the bling 99p paintings I have been doing since last may. About 40 now. I haven't got my camera with me damn to photo them altogether! I usually do, but you can see them when there was about 18 of them - on the same very wall, by clicking here. I have done two more of them, a green one with a rectangle of two photos that are same but not quite, of an abstracty dark green background with a glowing white light like an apparition. These photos are the centre and they are serrounded by a lighter geen background with diagonal stripes coming in from the edge. Then a layer of green scoobydoo strings wiggle into a verticle lines. The whole lot is centered by an mixture of assorted little beads with a bigger red one right in the very middle.

The other one is a vivid pink red one which is made up of vertical and horizontal bands sprinkled with little strips of scoobydoos. The centre is an orange cut circle of plastic bag, then a bangle then a really big fluffy bright red ball. This one really is very noticable because at the moment it is bang right in the middle of all 40 paintings.

It has been a beautiful day today. In fact I found really warm. It is very warm for the time of year. Is this an indication of global warming? It would seem that the world is heating up and quite quickly. But is this indicative of man's effect on the environment? Are co2 emisions resposible for the earth warming? I used to be sure that they were. Now I am not sure after watching a tv programme on channel 4 the other night. All these scientists from reputable scientific institutions were saying that co2 was not the cause of increases in the temperature of the planet in the past. (?!), and that it could be more likely because of fluctutions in changes in the sun. Apparently, around 8,000 years ago the earth was going through a really warm period (which "the polar bears survived"), in between various ice ages. These seem to be because of changes in the heat of the long term emissions of the sun. These vary apparently. Sooner or later there will be another ice age, or really warm period. Who the fuck knows? I am so freaked by this whole climate change stuff.

I actually have a fairly small carbon footprint. I don't drive a car - never have done. I have used a bicycle regularly in London to get about since the age of 15, and now I am, er, older hehe. I have never need a car, bike or public transport, tube or bus, is the fine. The bicycle is the best though.

Occasionally, I will have a holiday abroad, probably on average fly once (well once the AND back) every two years. It seems to be the norm for a lot of British peeps to go aboard to different destinations three, four, even five times a year. You know, for weekend breaks in European Capitals, a short holiday in the sun in mid winter, a long haul break somewhere exotic and sking etc. All that flying is producing lots of co2 emisions and lots of other pollutents into the atmosphere. When I see a jetstream trail of a jet I think is that plane messing up the planet? I used to think they were beautiful, those whitelines speeding across the blue sly, with the plane, sometimes barely visible, at the zenith. How exciting they seemed. Those people in those flying tubes whizzing around the planet leaving little white trails, going to amazing far-off places.

Of course a lot of people never fly at all, or visit other countries. I have been lucky, I have been to some pretty amazing places around the world. I enjoy meeting other people in their home countries. In London we have just about every nationality living cheek by jowl. Sometimes I am in the minority, I am the only white English London born Anglo Saxon person on the bus. But, that is just the way it is. It wasn't like that at all when I was a child. I was at mostly all white schools. It was rare to see foreign people of different colours and cultures and backgounds. Nowadays, schools are very mixed and have a large variety of kids from various ethnic backgrounds. Outside of London and othe other big British cities the white English tribe still exists. The government now reckons that multicultural society may not be working as much as it hoped. I dunno. I don't really mind. I get along with most people. I find that if you are pleasant to them and look them in the eye, even if they are wearing a veil!, they are pleasant back to me. I don't believe there is much social interaction between the various different nationalities. Say between the Somalis and the Poles, or the Nigerians and the Chinese. All the groups mostly keep to their own.

So, I dunno know. It seemed to be saying that global warming is because of cycles in the sun. However, as much as it may be that climate change is not being caused by co2 emissions (and I really am not sure about this thesis), I do firmly believe that human beings are directly responsible for any changes in the planet's atmosphere. I believe we are vastly over-populated and thus, our impact on the Earth is multiplied. As we seek new places to live and grow food and get energy for our living purposes, we are drastically altering vital eco systems on this planet. By systematically destroying rainforests for timber, or clearing to create land to grow soya to feed cattle for our hamburgers, we are removing the lungs of the Earth. These jungles eat up the co2, make oxygen and balance the world's weather systems. Without them, the planet will be a different place entirely.

We all know about climate change, or will do soon, so I ain't gonna bang on about it, just to say, I hope we are not fucked, and that we can escape from the horrendous consequences that some eminent people are forecasting. If everyone pulls together and tries to live a life with as little ecologically damaging consequences as possible, we may just pull through. But, the economics of greed, and Mankind's overwheening ego will, I fear, set us on a course for ultimate destruction.

Or maybe not. Who knows? It could all be a plot of the powers to be to destabilise, and control, the people's of the Earth. I don't know. Oh, to be an ostrich. Except that they don't really put their heads in the sand - it's a myth, apparently.

Goddam, humans are so clever, and so STUPID as well.

A lot of stuff is going on in my life at the mo, and affairs of the heart are to blame, and to those involved please know that I really did love you. I am sorry if I hurt you or if I hurt anyone else for the matter. I am only human, sometimes we do things that we shouldn't. I have faults like everyone else. And I want to apologise for being beastly and not communicating my wishes and I'm really, really sorry. I was a coward. We had a truly wonderful time together in that brief encounter and I will always remember it, and you with much fondness and happiness. Thank you.

All this stuff going on in my life means that I haven't been able to update the site. The work I am doing trying to do at present is the series of ninety nine paintings. The bling series the 99p series. Even the £1.00 series maybe! The 100 Poundshop Paintings even! Anyway, however many I decide (100 makes sense for hanging purposes - if they ever get shown that is, hehe). I have completed approx 45 so far. I have now bought all the canvases, although some are still at the 99p shop in Camden.

Apart from those I am always taking photos on my digital camera. My beloved Fuji f10. I am always taking pics of Canary Wharf from my studio window. It is quite amazing how different it looks on different days and times andI wanted to make a photographic documentation of it.

It was a bummer because I lost about 200 or more images of Canary Wharf pics and loads of other pics like lots of graffiti ones for graffiti1.com, when it finally gets going hehe. Yeah that was was the pits.

Except it wasn't as bad as having my mobile (cell) phone nicked - down in Somerset at a Zion Train gig. The concert was fantastic but some shithead pinched me mobee. And all my contacts. Buggeration across the nation!

Anyway, today I picked up my brand spanking new Samsung f300. Wow. It looks amazing! It is charging up right now. At least 16 hours. I think it is wild. It is really brand spanking fresh on the streets new now yeah I'm soo hip it's untrue!

There are a lot of projects I want to do, that I've got planned, not all of them art related, but certainly to do internet website developments.

My head feels like it is exploding, all this stuff to think about, all these things we have to deal with in this life on planet earth. This beautiful place that we inhabit.

Stuff like paying the rent. At home and the studio. And also bills, and the big ones always come at the same time, so just as you feel you have just about got one's finances under control, bang! The letters drop on the doormat.

My BT phonebill was completely insane. I have never had one like it. It was due to me talking to the person who I was very fond of and I was ringing her for long periods on her mobile. Every day for a few weeks. Until I stopped.

Long distance love affairs don't work (well at least this one didn't - for me). If you can't see the person you are talking to - it drives me crazy. I don't like phones. I quite often deliberately turn my mobile off. People get really annoyed.

I got an entry, see below, to the guestbook the other day (which I have now deleted, because it upset me rather) - so instead I have added it here(?) - which basically said I was moaning and grumbling and I shouldn't write such stuff, like affairs of the heart, in my blog (this page) because no-one was interested. The person also stated that if I couldn't afford to live in London, because I was moaning about the bills, I shouldn't live here - or at least I should get a proper job, like all the other sheep. So the implication was was that I was a waster and that everyone here has to work on a treadmill 9-5 job to pay the rent or mortgage.

Well, sod that, I am a bit different. As a Londoner, born and bred here, I have chosen a different path. Yes, I am fortunate because my home rent is cheap, so my studio rent is feasible. I work part time in a "proper" job, 3 days a week - 8.30 - 6pm, which is tough, but it pays the bills. Just. The rest of my time I devote to my art, or to other freelance work. In fact, I work virtually every day. To be an artist you need dedication, and you need sacrifice. Both of which I do, or have. I believe that life is for living and getting enjoyment and satisfaction. And blimey, everyone has bills, and everyone complains about them.

I don't need sanctimonious people who call themselves an "art dealer" and live in Islington, London, to question my art, emotions or motives. They are probably a failed, or untalented artist who has had to do something else because they don't have the courage of their own convictions to continue life as an artist. They have sold their artistic soul to Babylon.

If I want to write about stuff about my life, in my own website, I will. And I don't actually care if anyone reads it or not, or likes it or not, or approves of it or not. Yes, some of it is self indulgent twaddle, but so are most of the entries on myspace.com etc, or any body else's blog.

And if I want to moan, I will. Hey, I have had some shit to deal with and I just wanted to share. It is not like I usually moan - most of the time I am positive, I believe. Hey, I am moaning now, it is my perogative, I am a grumpy old man. And yes, I shouldn't moan at all. My life is hunky-dory to much of the world's population. I eat and I own stuff. Life is good. I shouldn't moan. But... I am just a person who has feelings and emotions and I just wanted to express them. Actually, looking back at what I wrote about my recent relationship and about the bills was only 4 small paragraphs, not "half". The rest is just waffle and twaddle.

Personally, I think "L'arte dealer" has their own personal problems to deal with. It is also interesting that they come from N1 - my neck of the woods, so they could be someone I know, and are winding me up. Which they have succeeded in doing so - a tiny, little bit. Still, they are only jealous, jealous of my outrageous genius, and the fact that it is actually they who live a humdrum, colourless, dull life, unlike the brilliant luminosity of my fantastic, wonderful existence.

It is usually the complainers who are the ones who moan and they turn out to be passengers who don't actually do but just leech from the creative people.

Actually, the more I write and think about it the more I think L'arte dealer is someone who knows me, or knows of me. Or, I think she has been someone who has been checking my pics and secretly fancies me and doesn't like it when I talk about my love affairs hehe. Or, it could be neither, you never know if the person who leaves the message is actually who they say they are. This one, however, comes across as authentic. I think she is a she, and I believe she could be 40 (though I am surprised she didn't put 39!), and the Islington N1 addy is spookily accurate, and also the author didn't fill in any of the other questions. Just straight to the point - in an angry fashion.

Hey, L'arte dealer, sorry your email bounced but if you want to represent me please get back in contact, I am sure we can become good friends. Keep having fun! And for god (sic) sake just stop moaning!!

I forgot to mention that I changed the index page by adding a new photo of me at the studio with some of the bling paintings on the left wall, and next to me is Ecstatic Cyclops. Left of me is Def and a couple of face drawings on canvas from this year. Oh, and more some reason I have no clothes on. Well, actually there is a definite reason. It's just to show what the artist looks like as a human being in his natural state. The naked ape. Not wanting to really offend anyone I have obscured my genitals by placing my hands in front of them. Apologies to those fellow human beings who may have taken any offence to seeing the sight of a partially naked man. Societies or cultures different from mine may have some difficulties with nudity of any sorts. But it my culture nudity is not taboo.

Throughout art history in both Western and Eastern cultures the nude figure has been represented and exulted. The human form can be very beautiful, remarkable, incredibly varied, disfigured, and of different ages and races. I am just adding my own interpretation of a self portrait to that canon. For other people's interpretations click here

Egon Schiele. nude self portrait

I also forgot to mention that I have now completed 52 of the bling paintings - which is more than half! Half of the projected 100 canvases. I have been thinking I will probably make a whole new website devoted just to these works - called paintings100.com. Somebody else has registered 100paintings.com, pah!

I removed the translation links on the homepage simply because they didn't work. Apologies to any one who tried using them. I will try to get them back up and running soon, hopefully. In the meantime you will just have to view the site in my mother tongue - English.

I feel discombobulated. I think a lot of people are feeling out-of-sorts at present. It's because of the weather, we people who live in the British Isles are used to rain, but this is getting ridiculous. We haven't had any proper sunshine since April when it was unseasonably baking hot. Now it has been raining and raining with now end in sight. Large swathes of the country in flooded and cities like Sheffield are under water. It is thoroughly depressing.

I changed the photo on the front page. I have removed the half naked one of me in the studio and replaced it with a close-up of an abstract painting called "Sentient Soup". I just thought in needed changing.

I went to see the Joan Mitchell: Leaving America exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in Picadilly the other day which has made me think. This work was a collection of paintings from the early 60's. The gallery was wonderful. Real old school high class. Down stairs they were showing a film about her life with her talking to various people like Brice Marden and showing an exhibition at the Robert Miller Gallery.

This was actually the first main exhibition of her work in the U.K. and concentrated on fairly early work executed during the early '60's. I found this work to be quite challenging and extremely rough and brutal. She gets slicker in her later paintings. If you don't know Joan Mitchell and you are interested in abstract expressionism then you really should investigate her work. She was a contemporary of Rothko, Pollack, De Kooning and all that lot, but was lesser known - maybe because she was a she? Anyway, I think there is a definite surge of interest in her work and that quite possibly she became the most interesting of them all. This could be because she worked for a long period of time (unlike Pollack and Rothko who died fairly young) and had a large and varied body of work.

I couldn't find an early pic but this is a really late one which shows she still had the touch.

Joan Mitchell
American, 1926-1992

I have finally changed the "painting of the month" and the other pages like it, ie "photo of the month", "print of the month" and "drawing of the week". This hadn't changed since last year, let alone every month. I had all those other distractions - especially that other website I was working on that I mentioned before.

This was a website about the Tour de France which this year started in London. I had done a lot of development on this site and I had envisigaged it as a portal for links to websites that had cycling and bicycle interests. Anyway, to cut a long story short, it never got off the ground, which was a shame because I had done masses of work on it and I wanted to prove something to myself. To make a website that made me some money. I think that I was far too ambitious and it really required a team of people working on it because the subject was so big and involved. It just wasn't something I could have done myself.

Never-the-less, I was disappointed that it never went on-line (apart from the initial homepage), because the idea was good and I put a lot of effort and time into it. Time that ate into the time when I could have been being arty. So there was that terrible guilt that I should have been painting or drawing, rather than pfaffing around on some website.

Anyway, I was bemoaning to one of my best mates, Simon, about that fact that I hadn't been able to actually get this website up and running and I was upset and felt that I had let myself down. He was very wise and said that I although the site hadn't gone live I had learned a lot - which I had. And that I can use what I had learned in future projects - which I will. In fact, there is a rather important sporting event coming to London in exactly 5 years from now which I will be documenting in a website. The mistakes I made in the Tour de France website I can learn from and not do the same again.

Now, today, as I write this at 7.20 am, at the studio, having been up since before dawn (and what a beautiful sunrise it was too), I have a great feeling of relief. Relief that the Tour de France is over for this year, and that chapter of my life has finished. Not that I am wishing my life away, it was just that I can now move on, and not have that weight of responsibility, that massive burden that I had placed upon myself, lifted.

I can also allow myself a wry feeling of satisfaction that the website never did go live. This is because of the drug scandals of the tour this year, which will be forever tainted by the cheats. I feel I have escaped the disgrace. That my website was not sullied.

photo of Canary Wharf. july 2007

So it's the last day of the year. I'm at home in my bedroom watching Spartacus - again. "I'm Spartacus" is a cry of freedom. Something that we all strive to have - to have freedom, to be free. Free to do what you want to do. But then.... when does someones freedom impinge upon another's space or life. It's difficult. But it is about respecting the other person's rights and sensibilities, I guess. At least that's what I try to do - be respectful of other people's space and feelings. Unless they are bullies. Then we need to stand up to them and tell them that they are imposing themselves too aggressively into other people's lives. As I have said before, I find it much easier being pleasant to other human beings than being nasty. But there are always those who want to control others it seems.

So what's happened in the last for months? Where have I been? Why no updates? Who cares? I do. That's why I like to share. But I'll be consice so as not to bore anyone.

1) Powerbook broke. Yes the "new" powerbook wot I bought on ebay went kapput. The processor seems to be fried. Which meant I couldn't do any computer work, surfing, emailing etc at all - aargh! I had just set it up for broadband too. Anyway, I have just got a mac mini, which seems great (sshh, it's silent), so I am reconnected to the gridnettubeweb again. Phheww!!.

2) Holiday. Back to Bayahibe in the Dominican Republic for 3 weeks in november. And boy, did I need a break. Saw all my friends and Luis came to see me from Samana.

3) Work. Workwork takes up time. Also studio work. I have now completed more than two thirds of the "Bling" paintings - about 68. I am also doing more figurative work again. Some black marker pen drawings on small canvases. I also did some pen drawings on holiday which I hope to make into big paintings - maybe when the 100 abstracts are finished. Hopefully that will be by Spring, if I work hard.