Artist as Hero

I will not cease from mental fight

 

 

Bring me my bow of burning gold

Bring me my arrows of desire

Bring me my spear: oh clouds unfold

Bring me my chariot of fire.

 

Hill Bill x Ben Billy

Hill Bill x Ben Billy

Chamba 11.4.81

One of the chaps that i went through the art college experience with was Richard Butler,

who later went on to front a band called the Psychdelic Furs.

During our last year at college, from time to time we returned to the topic of what part of the world we may end up in during our oncoming formative years.

It took me six or seven years to finally end up in India.

On this occasion we were sat in a shanty town restaurant in Chamba

- a meeting of the ways.

All the drovers pass through on their way to higher grazing grounds.

It's a bit of a frontier town, or was anyway.

We were treating ourselves to a meat curry.

We had met up with a couple of blokes who had spent the winter up in the mountains.

One of them had brought a compendium cassette of relatively recent rock tunes

and put it on the rare cassette player that the establishment possessed.

I cant remember the exact words but it came as quite a chilling surprise

when the Furs filled the mud floor with

"hello India, this is America"

Link to Wooden Om Page

http://loonsencyclopedia.blogspot.co.uk/p/wooden-om.html

Just Daydreams, Tom

Riding with the wind, floating in the breeze.
Only, just daydreams.
Only, lots of them.

Little Wing

You enthusiastically commented that my work seemed to be on a roll in face book a week or two ago. In some respects, it is.

Since last autumn, I have had idea upon idea, one after the other, they don't stop.

The problem is that the only ones that seem to be successful are the ones that stay with me.

As soon as I try to involve other people they seem to take off for a short while and then slowly, but surely, the wheels fall off.

I cant help but think (in some instances) I may be scaring people off. I mean, how scared are people going to be about getting their programme hacked into in a powerfully maverick way?

In particular:

There has been a "peoples" art gallery/set up in which a colleague and I were aiming to set up a particularly large art show in September which has slowly fizzled out due to their lack of commitment. They either don't want us, or are incredibly inefficient.

There is an outdoor project in which I have expressed interest since it first got started last September and whilst being very friendly haven't been able to fit me into their scheme of things. Although I do find familiar faces cropping up here and there - jobs for the boys as it were.

And,

There was the large billboard project, last autumn, that was set up by someone I have worked with on large things previously.

I actually helped to set up this thing "E.C.Arts" as a viable thing in its early days. I was encouraged to go for the projected which involved covering billboards all over Birmingham and spent weeks putting proposals together for three billboards, all of which were rejected by the "committee".

I have since learnt that others have been granted billboards who hadn't even initially applied and some even knew that they had the commission before the thing was announced anyway.

And last, but not least, I was working on my own pub sign extravaganza which was quite forcefully knocked into the long grass following a very significant change in the position of the goal posts.

Fuck me again, I'm a poet!

My main problem, is probably its time to go public again.

And I seem to be failing on finding suitable venues.

There seem to be be far too many curators and organisers around, maybe people who feel they have more to offer than the actual artists themselves, seeing as they have organised the actual event.

They actually do M A courses to learn how to go about it in a text-book kind of way.

The underling currant at the moment, the hip way of approaching your art work is: just get on with it - don't think about why you are doing it. Work that out after you have completed it.

This has been one way I have approached my work all my life. One way, not the only way.

I look around and I see places and empty spaces and I think "I could be there"

Maybe its time to create my own bulldozer to jump aboard and plough forward with my own art quiver and maybe invite my own friends to come along.

Man x his Man

The phenomenon of Man and his Man

A couple of rocks in space

From the Perranporth side.
I never really fathomed out what the title was about from St Agnes as the rocks near enough merged into one.

Part of our fortnight stay in Little Orchard Village (again)
I believe we are becoming a pair of those sad people that seem to return to the same spot, year in, year out.
I had a bunch of notes that I was going to add to this picture but the the car got broken into by the dunes whilst we were out dog walking and the bag that I had stupidly left on the front was swiped as they smashed the front window. I will never leave anything that seems to be valuable in view in a car again - honest.
Anyway it was nice to do a group of small pictures apropos of nothing, without any ulterior motives.

A little red number.

The Byrds-"Eight Miles High"-3/3/67

A comment on the view from a high and dangerous place in the previous blog

Galloping George

I am not doing as much painting as I should at the moment.

Hard to believe I havent finished the pub signs yet.

Having returned from a week in the lake district.
This is a particularly complex post (for me). I need to lay out what I am up to.

*The Icon"

God for Harry, England and St George.

LANGDALE
We stayed in Langdale with the pikes in view from our front window

Aydin and I went on two particularly gruelling walks,
the first was around the Langdale Pikes,

The long and winding road.

Troughton Beck

Mind the memory of it becomes rather fuzzy after the second walk around Scafell Pike, which I was told was the highest mountain in Britain.

Path up to Scafel Pike

The Pike itself

View from the dangerous bit around the corner.

We missed the path turnings twice which would have made it comfortable.
And ended up climbing over a dangerously steep and high ridge, having two large dogs made the whole thing more frightening and more awkward. Toffee nearly fell backwards on me up the first climb - thankfully, he trusts me and didnt struggle when I caught hold of and supported him. Wilson panicked when Aydin lifted him up about five feet and nearly knocked all of us down a very steep incline.

I am working at present of producing C.D.s of music I mainly made with Phil Gray and Colin Browne in the seventies.

I am collecting a group of waterfall images - looking for info on how water splashes onto, through and around boulders. Also how small trees root themselves to the boulders in amidst the falling water.

I am hoping to use this information in relation to the watermills at Bharmor and the cascade paintings started a few months ago.

I have recently joined a web site linked to images linked to words found in the english dictionary.
Images of signs are used of words found in nature (both rural and urban!)
These words also require explanations: an aspect I plan to thouroughly explore, giving account of my unfolding life!.

Part of what used to be a walkers pub in the lake district but now has become familyised like going into somebody else's front room.You can see from the image where the extension was slapped onto the existing bar.

http://thevisualdictionary.net/

And finally my dog Toffee has just had the snip, to relieve prostrate problems. He seems old all of a sudden, and is far from happy at the moment..

U.S.B & Zips

I have discovered a similar problem inherent in zips on weatherproof coats and connections with and to digital machinery.
The rest of the device may be in perfect working condition but when the connecting bit goes, you are fucked.
This has just happened (again) to my last waterproof coat.
And also to the machine that converts Cassettes into Digital.

Early stuff from mainly Phil in his bedsit in Ashtead Surrey, This was us regrouping after we had left Art College and hangs mainly around his ideas for songs.

The first recordings we made in Balham with Colin Browne and Phil Gray, Pity I wasnt the name of a colour.