and then, of course, there was pollock.

'Jack the Dripper' you never cease to amaze me. So many complexities, so much fun. The second piece is Pollock's 'The Moon Woman'. I love it - it doesn't look cheesy or cliched. It's just happy. This is one of Pollock's early paintings... clearly.

I saw his later 'action paintings' all over NYC this year and I couldn't directly say why I fell in love with them. This quote by Hans Namuth is close to what I feel. "(Pollock's paintings) reveal that his all-over line does not give rise to positive or negative areas: we are not made to feel that one part of the canvas demands to be read as figure, whether abstract or representational, against another part of the canvas read as ground. There is not inside or outside to Pollock’s line or the space through which it moves…. Pollock has managed to free line not only from its function of representing objects in the world, but also from its task of describing or bounding shapes or figures, whether abstract or representational, on the surface of the canvas."

Harold Rosenberg also said that "what was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event. The big moment came when it was decided to paint 'just to paint.' The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation from value — political, aesthetic, moral." It is perfection in my eyes. Pollock used to get dirty, on all fours. He stood over his paintings and applied sand, glass blended with impasto. His paintings are so much fun! Why does a painting need to say anything?

I mentioned previously that I want to have a second childhood and I don't know a better way of doing so than by painting! Last week in my art class, I brought a photo in with me to paint. I was bored. Today I went in with no idea at all. And then I remembered a memory and I saw these pictures and something just clicked. I like abstract art as a mode for expressing my memories. I like impressionism when painting from a photograph

I included the first image by Chagall ('Paris through the window') because I felt like I was looking into my own world. I miss Paris. I miss art. I like to see things like a painting. I will go to Paris this/next year. It's on. I don't have any commitments, best to do so now before I end up in another serious relationship. I feel so alive lately. So happy, like a Pollock painting. I feel like I'm becoming more open and creative and childlike once more. It's a happy feeling. I'm not there yet, but I can feel myself "moving forward" ;)

Oil paint is amazing. Oil paint is gooey and yucky and fun fun fun. I spent about 2 hours just enjoying painting with oils - the way they blended into one another, the silky feel of my paint brush bristles moulding into the layers of colour. I wasn't really concentrating on what I was painting. I listened to a playlist that reminded me of another time and felt like laughing.

The man/woman image seen in both these paintings is one that I find really powerful. I once read that Plato believed that at the start of the world, there was this one being. It was rather short, with a head that had two faces, looking in different directions, with two sets of sex organs, four legs and four arms. One day, Zeus got jealous of this creature’s willpower and stamina and ability to work in unison and so well for long periods of times that he cut the creature in two with a lightning bolt, creating man and woman. Plato believed that now humans search for their lost half to re-fuse together and become one again.

Uh, I want to feel lightness... this lightness that I'm feeling now with another being. Why is it that I never feel lightness in a relationship? Only heaviness. I'm 19, it shouldn't matter and for the first time in a long time, it doesn't. I think I ruined something that could have been wonderful and could have been exactly how Plato saw it, but that's what happens when you've been fucked over too many times and can't handle intimacy and openness. A part of me wants to start it again, now. A part of me wants to stay where I am because perhaps he will never understand me. Luckily, it's not just my decision to make.

I'm not scared anymore. :)

to beautiful Joni...

I remembered a phrase recently that I'd heard in a Joni Mitchell doco. It really bothered me; I couldn't remember the song I'd heard it in. But it wasn't a lyric.

In the 70s Joni was romantically linked to Graham Nash who wanted to marry her but she felt as though she'd come from a lineage of women who's passion for art and music had been buried by the men they'd ended up with. So she left him, and said these last words in a telegram, "If you hold sand too tightly in your hands, it will run through your fingers."

I haven't felt like myself recently; not that that's necessarily a bad thing. I just feel as though I'm on the cusp of something (what wank). I find that phrase so beautiful and it seems to move something within me because it's so true not just with romance and love but with everything. I used to be unbound by people or events or my aspirations. I used to be reckless and thought little of the consequences of my actions.

But then I got burned.

Now I think that I try to hold onto things too tightly because I don't want to be hurt again. I was recently described as being "straight-edged" and it really insulted me. I enjoy reading my text books and staying in on the weekends so that I can learn something new about the world. I don't think there's anything wrong with that but is this restricting me to a life where amazing experiences can pass me by?

I feel quite closetted at the moment. Why should one description make me feel so character-less?

I miss art; I miss music, I miss painting. I find a kindred spirit in Joni. She seems both lost and centred and in my opinion, she is the ultimate artist. Strange, how my passions have changed over the years because I know that despite doing Science and Medicine and Honours and all those scholarly things, I'm always going to be an artist.

From tomorrow, I start painting again.