My mouse has paint on it
I was wearing my Maryhill Art School t-shirt at the weekend, and zantic commented that it was probably the only t-shirt I now own that doesn't have some sort of paint spatter on it. Ironically, she's probably right. But it's more the computer that gets me. Both the monitor and the keyboard have signs of being in a studio now, and the mouse is positively technicolour owing to my habit of having source material on screen as I work and also messing around with LJ and Facebook and the like whilst things are drying.
I'm currently reading a book called What Painting Is by James Elkins. More about it later, but it's essentially a voyage into the mind and processes of a painter using alchemy as a metaphor. It works pretty well and there are some wonderful insights only someone who has acutally been absorbed into painting could give. This one I read yesterday and thought, oh god, that's me...
"Sooner or later every one of a painter's possessions will get stained. First to go are the studio clothes and the old sneakers that get the full shower of paint every day. Next are the painter's favourite books, the ones that have to be consulted in the studio. Then come the better clothes, one after another as they are worn just once into the studio and end up with the inevitable stain. The last object to be stained is often the living room couch, the one place where it is possible to relax in comfort and forget the studio. When the couch is stained, the painter has become a different creature from ordinary people, and there is no turning back."
I'm currently reading a book called What Painting Is by James Elkins. More about it later, but it's essentially a voyage into the mind and processes of a painter using alchemy as a metaphor. It works pretty well and there are some wonderful insights only someone who has acutally been absorbed into painting could give. This one I read yesterday and thought, oh god, that's me...
"Sooner or later every one of a painter's possessions will get stained. First to go are the studio clothes and the old sneakers that get the full shower of paint every day. Next are the painter's favourite books, the ones that have to be consulted in the studio. Then come the better clothes, one after another as they are worn just once into the studio and end up with the inevitable stain. The last object to be stained is often the living room couch, the one place where it is possible to relax in comfort and forget the studio. When the couch is stained, the painter has become a different creature from ordinary people, and there is no turning back."