The Royal Rumble was rather good this year. Yes it was. It was the first time I'd felt the old silly wrestling thrills for a while. Which is nice, because in terms of social degrees of Kevin Bacon, I'm much closer to the wrestling now, so it's nice when I actually like it.

Here is the edited middle of an email I thought about sending. Or more like the bits of the email that were about my Self and Self indulgent. The bits I've edited OUT of this would be the bits more likely to actually get sent.

I think probably when you write letters it's probably good not to exclusively talk about yourself. But in blogs it's permitted, which is strange.

It goes over some stuff I have covered in this blog, but probably in a way that's comparatively Now. But with a slightly different tilt perhaps. More on the broader cultural observationy Ruskiny type stuff than the what should Chloe do next type stuff. It's like an extended quote from a modified version of me.

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Maybe sincerity not a word I would choose by myself. I used to want to maintain innocence. That felt like the right word to fight the tide. Not ignorance, but a kind of chosen innocence, maybe a kind of faith. A pure connection to things from life and from experience that added dimensions of lightness to my very consciousness, plucked me out of the bog.

(Picture: The Bog of Eternal Stench being crossed)

But then later I became more aware of the whole 'you can't do that now, we can't be that now, we've gone past that now' doctrine. I didn't believe it myself, or I thought there must be a loophole even within the boggy 'discourse', but I saw how rigidly ingrained it was. These people seemed impervious to logic, and this art world seemed impossibly, autistically impervious to my ideas, my logic about (ultimately) what life was for and what people were for. I was striving to work according to values it seemingly didn't recognise. I began to see I might have to make do with being an artist somehow outside of the art world. Maybe computer games or cereal boxes.

I suppose I do observing of prevailing tides and all that a little bit too, and in that role you're passive by definition and not inserting your own ideas about how things could be or the badnessess of how things are. And I find it all a bit less stressful when talking about culture things other than Art, even though it's all connected. I find the art people the twattiest, and I find the art world the most saddening bit of the picture. And explaining that makes me come across bitter, so I like myself less when I'm talking about those things.

And then there's a kind of duality, from that passive observer viewpoint there's a kind of delight in seeing how things work and recognizing the very mechanics of now and seeing perverse beauties in it and feeling quite peaceful about it, since one person seems to have no power over it... and also, understanding the world as it is must be an advantage in completing this quest, or this puzzle, if that's what it is.... The ghastly beautiful mess.

(Actually a funny thing is, I can't imagine what the perfect paradise art world would be. What would it be? Maybe I secretly revel in the the sordid difficultness. Well, 'revel' is a bit strong.)

But then at the same time, a quite strong sense of wanting to step up and be a man and be unfashionably conservative and be brutal, unambiguous about the degradation I see and the endless mind numbing clichés in place of thought, the insidious false doctrines that pretend to be neutrality and freedom, and the horrid stagnant half arsed signifiers of contemporaryness. I hate art magazines too, I really do, I was somewhat susceptible to them for a while, I thought I could learn how to slot myself in to the cool sophistication, but all I see now is willfully obscure tokens of trendiness and a sort of very wrongheaded substitute atheist religion, money-centred and utterly narcissistic. Of course. Looking at them in Smiths makes me feel dirtier than looking at Closer magazine does. Slightly. Depends on how emotionally sensitive one's feeling. If you're cursed with being a person who gets all riled up in an undignified way about broad culture gubbins.

But I always wanted to be an artist and paint. And I still do. Or at least draw and monkey with form, when painting feels like too much of a grand responsibility.

(That was a grainy photo of a closeup of part of the portrait of Bob I have been painting.)

(First written in diary)

1. Having a snappy, funny, readable design that expresses (maybe a better word is 'communicates') something I've felt or thought

2. Finding the depth or the weirdness in a subject, uncovering further dimensions

3. Finding things happen fast with wit lines and become wittier organically

4. Making something that's joyous and also true (both at the same time)

5. Discerning the facial expression on a cat.

(I love Durer's walrus. I don't think he'd seen one, but he did his level best with the information he had. He did his best possible walrus. Old master paintings are impenetrable if you're thinking about trying to reproduce their surface, but drawings are like magic clues, there's no lie in a line.)

I like my drawings as drawings and I don't feel the need to colour them in, exactly. I'll finish my old paintings for now and therein will be my dealings with colour. Controlling past rashness.

(Taking the blogging in baby steps, maybe the trickle will become a gush.)

I haven't written on this blog for a long time. It would be nice if that was because I was so busy being creative and excited and successful that I couldn't find the time since I was deliciously fulfilled elsewhere. But really it's (mainly) because I've been quite depressed and my thoughts have been slow and confused.

My arthritis has been bad, that's a big reason why I've been depressed. Not so much about it as because of it, because it has dragged my body down and made it channel its funny little energies into fighting disease rather than being happy. And the arthritis has made me anaemic too. I am currently off my iron tablets to see if I will get anaemic again without them, which I think I might be.

(red meat is rich in iron.)

Some things have happened I suppose you'd say.... I did meet Mick Foley properly at a memorabilia fair in the Birmingham NEC. I will get round to writing an account of that, I think it would be worth doing. Plus he asked me if I had written about it and I had to say no, knowing that it was because I was depressed that I hadn't, and that's just all a bit of a downer, so I will write about it. Stephen our biggest kitty died. Maybe you knew that if you looked at the white blog. He is a missed cat. He was the best of cats. I will miss him for a long time if not forever. he died young.

(I suppose there's nothing wrong with writing a list of THINGS for now and then maybe another time I can wheadle out more thoughts from the things.)

I'm trying to compose an email to Matthew Collings after he did that good Civilisation programme about Ruskin, and also I found his website where he does the paintings with his wife and they put their cards on the table about 'only having ideas about form' and things, which I may write about tomorrow or today.

There have been some big dramatic troughs for me, and I don't want to just go back to meandering about all neutrally and manfully as if nothing happened. Perhaps I will be able to write about things in a way that conveys the drama of ebbs and flows without being too personal and confessional and embarrassing.

I may actually enter some competitions this year, because there may be something to be said for not being scared of art and not being scared of rejection. And something to be said about putting your efforts into one serious effort for a while. And something to be said about trying to be an artist and get the art glory instead of being all ambivalent about being an illustrator and all femininely ambivalent about everything.

I am painting Bob from three angles for the BP portrait thing. I worry the painting is hazy or corpse-like or rubbish or old fashioned or amateurish, but I am also sort of positive despite all that crap because I'm getting on with it. And sometimes I quite like it.

But it also feels like I want to do substantial drawings, whereas painting... well I'm not sure what I have to say with it just now, with colour, where shapes and 'ideas about form' excite me. I want to do very special drawings of cats up trees, partly since one of my strongest abiding visual memories of Stephen was when he got chased up the tree last spring by a dog. In April when the first bit of the summer was. Before the three months of wetness.

I have fallen out of love with wrestling a little, partly because of the darkness of the Chris Benoit thing but I suppose more because of the way that Vince McMahon and the corporate wrestlers responded to it and how unpleasant it all felt. Then I started losing my innocence and reading the stories again. Then because Randy is something of an arsehole. And because... maybe something had passed. Having said that, I may sort of re-enter a more pragmatic sort of like-affair with it, because Mick is my actual friend now, it's the Royal Rumble soon and if you can't get a little party popper fun squirt going about the Royal Rumble, there's something wrong with you.

My depression has sort of made me abandon some of my 'threads' and some of my hang-ups, in a way that could ultimately be productive. What are the big shifts a-brewing? Well... I think I might start taking myself a bit seriously again. I think I mean I want to try and make pictures that are more like monumental microcosms with manifestoes to boot.

I can't be bothered with being hung up about doing blog drawings for its own sake or being mildly amusing in that blog way. I hope that bloggable traces will come about naturally when I pursue my microcosmic monumental excitements. I'm happy with the extent I do and don't fit in to cartoonist blog world and other such made up things.

I've reached the end of my tether and boinged all over the place. I felt there was no more fight in me, so my only option is to stop thinking of things like a fight, sometimes.

I thought maybe it was time for an update.

I'm never sure how to begin these things nowadays.

I'm not sure that this will even have a theme, just hopefully some things that are specific to the lump of time that's passed since the last one.

I'm hesistant to do blogs now because unless I've put my money where my mouth is, I don't want my mouth to take over.

I had an idea at first that my next grey blog would be about looking at entries from a year or two years ago and thinking of what has happened in between and how I've revised my views and enthusiasms.

Then for a while I was going to do one about 'How chaotic is my world?' which I considered calling 'How chaotic is my mind?' but that would be a bit close to the bone.

I can't quite remember now, but I think that chaos thing might have been about always seeming to begin from chaos and gradually differentiate form, but how decisions about specifics were still really painful. But I can't remember where it started from. It seemed like a winner at the time. Maybe the chaos was an archetypal chaos of some sort. I've deflated a few times since then.

Also something that's happened is that I met Brian Wilson in a little erm.. eatery? (with ribs and guacamole) in a downmarket part of Bournemouth, and then again sitting at a table. Near Lidl and Primark. I was invited to meet Darian of Brian's touring band/the Wondermints and so I did. I showed the ladder painting to Brian's band and to Brian. In a shy rather than a pushy way. Brian asked how much I wanted for it, then I think he felt funny about being the moon.

I've sort of decided to re-include the Beach Boys in my drawings and see what I can do with them with my increased drawing confidence and my particular sort of honesty. I was thinking that I used to look at the Wilson brothers and they were so cute and beautiful, I sort of just wanted them to be cute and beautiful, I put a sort of vaseline on the lens in my mind so they were all soft focus. But that can be a little restrictive. I'm less scared of the ugly bits of my crushes now. I mean like their fat and their puffyness or their gurning or whatever. I might be a little more fearless now and use my grasp of form in drawing to see what I see in them now. That's the freedom I think I've striven for and won in my drawings, the ability to draw my actual thoughts and visions about things, which is harder than it sounds, and could be the key to all liberty that follows.

And to be fair Dennis was one of the most gorgeous human men that there ever was on earth.

Maybe nothing would come of drawing Brian, maybe Brian's outward appearance doesn't actually give many clues to the mysteries around his artistry. he often looks partially 'absent' in photos anyway. I was trying clumsily to draw him just now, and I doodled a robust memory caricature of Randy Orton in the margin, looking a bit bemused as to why he had been bumped in favour of Brian. Which I suspect he would be. And that's quite a striking thing about drawing wrestlers and especially Randy, and his narcissism is so complete, and he really expresses it all through his body. The shell becomes the conduit for the whole lot. That's why it's made so much sense.

But generally I've noted a long-time theme in my imagery that's clean-shaven cute young American men with blue eyes and preferably chin dimples. I don't quite know why, but there it is. Obviously that covers the Wilsons, Orton, Cena (with a 'kind of' and with an extra pinch of tree trunk), Paul Newman, almost Christopher Reeve Superman except I don't think he had the dimple. But he was superman so he didn't need one. Plus more piffling men I've fantasised about idly who I won't name because it seems unkind to call them 'piffling'.

So I want to learn more faces and become still more dextrous and playful, extend my fantasy world and take some control over the cleft chinned lantern jawed miscreants before they turn my brain into sour milk.

Blue eyed rescuers from another planet.

Also I've been painting a portrait of my Dad which may or may not be good enough to submit to BP portrait prize or something like that. Or the next one might if I get on a roll. It's exciting in that I feel like I'm beginning to grasp 'fast painting' for the first time ever. It's taken me about three or four days and it's nearly finished.

Well, I had an intermission and I talked to Bob about my painting. The Da one. And in general. He was in the bath, I was sitting in a chair unclothed. He's not too sure about the current My Dad one, which I'm sure I was going to say something else positive about. He thinks it's odd and an oddity.

I had a mini confidence crisis of the kind that I have with devastating frequency, and I said to him something like 'Are my paintings any good compared to other people's paintings?' and I think I said that because I sometimes wonder what my unique skill really is. Or whether I have something to add. And there are some technically good painters around, and good draftspeople, and people doing more neato commercial stuff with more elaborate slick honed imagery than I can summon the conviction to do, perhaps. Because pumping out imagery seems like an empty thing to do for its own sake. I'm too busy looking for little pockets of soul or something.

And Bob said that he thinks I'm really really good drawing wrestlers and not many people can do that like I do. My fast free drawings, they're good, he thinks, because that's like my most natural raw talent. I am a more natural draftsperson than I am a painter. And that my very careful labour intensive paintings that are really delicate and soulful, that's not so much about raw skill, but no one else does those. But that between those two apparently distant poles, there's a kind of middle ground, like the 'fast painting' I'm attempting, where other people can do it just as well or better. And he noted it's almost like I'm trying to do something more 'generic' and something less willfully 'unique'. But maybe I don't mind that, I countered, maybe I'm laying myself bare with the 'genericness' because I think honing my raw skill is a real and an honest thing to do.

(I painted that! get in touch if you want one of you!)

I think contact with John K's no nonsense approach to teaching made me feel like firstly I didn't want to feel like I was 'hiding' gaps in my competence behind excessive quirkyness (more of which... soon), and secondly that I wanted to find ways of working where I could feel I was testing the very limits of my skill, of my visual brain, which I've managed somewhat with the drawings. I reacted against my previous 'esoteric' self. But what happened next, as documented in the previous entry here, was that I rediscovered the appeal of delicacy and slowness once of I was out of John's thrall, and hoped to be able to combine it with a more rigorous manly approach to design and composition.

So I have this current theory that my fast paintings (laid bare) need to be faster and my slow paintings (esoteric and soulful) need to be slower. The Da painting is a fast painting. The slow paintings are in gestation.

But then we got sidetracked with a whole other analogy. Times have been a bit tough lately, we are acutely distressed about money, but the principle has always been that Bob supports me in order that I can be an artist. And I've sort of achieved that part of the bargain, with all the heroic flops and counter-commercial decisions and whim-chasing and sheer bloody minded irrationality that that entails. I have been a head in the clouds clueless about the real world artist with great aplomb. This sounds quite cocky, but we even drew parallels between the way my work has unfolded and the way that Brian Wilson's music did when he was in his twenties. Now, I'd like to make it clear that I don't think I'm as good as Brian Wilson or that my paintings are as good as his music. And I'm not popular or successful. But this analogy still worked somewhat, as a story of shifting intentions.

By the end of college I had managed to produce some paintings that were pleasing to my mum and to other people. They had a good mix of accessibility, potential commercial appeal and real feeling, real soulfulness. Things like Ponderers and Hopeful Hannie. Those could be like Help me Rhonda or something. So why not just do more like that. If it's already a perfect formula. And when my moon ladder painting went down well with Brian's band, my mum said 'Paint more paintings like that!' like she is completely exasperated by the fact that I haven't. It's a no-brainer surely. Do more ones like the perfect one that everyone likes. But I was trying to be an artist, I was trying to push myself 'further out' for whatever mish mash of good and bad reasons. But Bob compelled me to be a real artist. So when I lived in Uploders I did a bunch of paintings that were quite encrusted and quite odd and quite dark, and many of which I abandoned, though with the intention to one day complete them. I wanted them to be ambitious and complex and intense. I thought I was pursuing my best 'instincts'. And I thought that was my job. That could be likened to the time of Smile. And in some ways I just wasn't that well... supported at that time. It felt like I was way out on my own.

So it sounds like I'm comparing my Mum to Mike Love saying 'Don't f*** with the formula!' and erm.. I suppose I am. She's not like Mike Love. But there's some parallel in the nature of the request. But not in a super negative way, because up to a point Mike Love only said that because he was bemused as to why Brian would want to do anything else. It was a reasonable request from one angle. And being an artist is not a very rational business. Not always. Not in the terms of the requirements of the wider world. I understand her exasperation with my abject failiure. But I wasn't going to just be able to do more things that came together like the ladder painting just on demand. It was a moment. It's a shame that my work often feels like moments, then sometimes I have to sell off some of the moments and get left with a stupid incomplete story. It might be that I'm suddenly interesting and kooky to people after I'm dead. I'm not quite as Romantic now about following my 'instincts' or maybe it's just that I'm more in touch with earthly things like 'fundamentals' and practising drawing to keep my hand in like Nigel Kennedy practises with his violin.

But anyway that's where I got to with talking to Bob. With some kind of perpective about what the heck's happened over the last few years and my various theories about what being an artist is supposed to mean. I haven't done this blog for a while... I've wanted to be doing the things and talking about them afterwards. But now I've talked about somethings in a freeform quirky way which I hope isn't upsetting.

Incidentally I have relented and I now have a Deviantart page, which I've put some of my nicer pictures on. I've closed the cafepress thing because that didn't work for me. Do let me know if you'd like to purchase one of my precious moments (drawings).

Oh, and after Bob offered his advice about the Da painting and how to improve it, I tried to take it and then we decided that taking advice is never a good idea ever at all from anyone.

(That was Sassetta's the Meeting of St. Anthony and St.Paul. Or most of it)

When I started painting when I was seventeen, I was attracted to early renaissance fresco painting in a quite straightforward way.

But I think I never got around to fully flowering what that was all about. I tackled it all in an innocent unschooled way. Even though I was technically at school.

I liked frescoes. I used to paint these naive angels. I hadn't made any commitments about religion then.

I've had a confidence crisis lately and I've been feeling it's hard finishing things for a long time. Not so much that it's hard to physically sit and finish a thing, more that it's hard to even conceive of a finished thing. I always work through it, even if I'm working on piffling things.

If I was letting that voice talk, I would say that I feel an incredible pressure on me. I can't come up with anything to justify my existence. I can't do anything great. I can't do anything that's the sum of what I've learned or that's like a great soft rock album of my current worldview or something. My confidence falters at the first hurdle. I envy people who do these grand things.

But I decided recently to pick up a little Dorling Kindersley book I have about Piero Della Francesca, and some of the images in it, and some of the words in it have allowed me to find a mental space in which to conceive of new paintings, never mind the 'pressure' or the mental claustrophobia, never mind how long it's been since I was seventeen, never mind that Dana Schutz has really elaborate concepts for her silly paintings and I sometimes kick myself for not having a gimmick as zippy as hers or for not making all the wrestlers and triffids and green men paintings that I tried to plan a year ago. Never mind John K's strident teaching or cartoonists. Perhaps I need to go out on a limb again like my lonely teenage self and not think too hard about which communities might accept what I'm producing.

'Piero's choice of a more provincial location reflected his desire to develop his pictorial talents by working on perspective and colour purity, as opposed to the discipline of drawing, which was the central element of the artistic evolution in contemporary Florence.' - My little shiny Dorling Kindersley book about Piero Della Francesca with lots of nice pictures in.

Purity... I had a troubled friend in my first year at art college called Claire. He favourite things were nature and purity. She'd had mainly bad experiences with people. She liked the Carpenters a lot. And Shake 'n' Vac. We went to the Natural History Museum and looked at minerals. She did little tiny delicate sketchbooks.

I think I'd like to take the influence of these early renaissance things a little more seriously. And it's not just a superficial influence I don't think. I've told people before that on a Weymouth College trip to the Louvre, I had a quite moving little time all by myself and felt much closer to some the paintings than to the people I was with. I especially remember looking at this one: Sassetta's The Beatified Ranieri Rasini Releases the Prisoners of Florence'.

I always loved the delicacy and the maths. Also love Uccello and Giotto and Fra Angelico in different ways. I would like to do some paintings where I allow myself to be delicate and rigorous and particular and use fine grain wet and dry paper to sand them down. I found this company that does MDF cut to size. MDF primed by myself was always the best thing for this kind of painting. I think perhaps this would be a good way forward in marked contrast to the quasi-alla prima or splodgy animalistic mini-paintings I've been attempting recently with varied success (will upload some soon).

I can do delicacy, and I have been almost fighting it lately.

I can use the skills and dexterity I've gained through all my drawing experiments to help me with sketching and designing my purity paintings, but put cartoons and outright silliness out of my head for a little while. Or keep them in their place, and when I'm in that mood, be silly with great sincerity in the designated places.

But I need space to be all by myself I think.