Becoming Osiris from the Grim City Series

There were big changes over the last few months. The weather changes keep crashing in and life is rarely less than harsh in the sense that pain is a constant companion.

In the spaces between the bad moments are other moments worthy of note. The garage has been a sore in my life since I moved in. The intention was to use it as storage for paints and chemicals as well as a space for an easel or print making system. After the move I realized that the 15cm space between the walls and the roof let not only wind but also dirt and leaves and possums. In the face of the illness there was no hope of cleaning it up so things consigned there were in a black hole and in my mind were being ruined by the conditions.

After the heart surgery some of the small return of vitality has allowed me to work myself into parts of the old building and see what survives. To be honest I have no problems with the possums. They once had an entire family group of a half dozen or so sleeping among my stored paintings and I got a lot of pleasure from having them about. The problem was the stinky mating stuff the males splash all over their turf (the garage) and the fact that they are too lazy to go outside to pee when it is cold or raining. I will try to line about two thirds of the walls and roof with builders plastic if I am well enough some time in the future and win myself a clean, possum proof, area. Funds will slow it down a little but it’s a plan. It is nice to have one again!

Some inroads have been made by using cheap steel shelves from Bunnings and making a shell of the builder’s plastic as well as a door of the same. There is nothing of value in the place but I am slowly cleaning the few tools and things and getting them under cover. The art tools I had out there have been well preserved and moved back into the house. Just pens and inks and stuff. It was reassuring to see that I had the sense to store things in reliable boxes before I got too ill to think straight and so still have them.

With the cleaning of the garage it has been possible to assess and store things that were cluttering up the back room of the house and the old dining table went into there and is a drawing table, making two in the room. Wonderful! With all that space it has been possible to work on a few lino print designs. They were a lot of fun and I am thinking of setting myself up to do a few over time. The very simple designs on a small (15cm) space are challenging and I surprised myself by coming up with some elegant images. A few years ago I built a shop for some things I wanted to sell online. It was too upmarket for the little items I wanted to sell and I discovered Ebay anyway so I let it sit. It is still there and may be just the thing to give people access to some of the prints. I have been slowly acquiring the things I need to mount them properly but again it is more a plan I am setting out on as health and finances allow. Over time I will try to hunt down some hand-made paper although my ability to make a print does not warrant risking one just yet

The Grim City Drawings are almost finished.  I am finding the whole limitation of a “set” is making me chafe at the bit. I would like to experiment a little as I find where I had stored the old pens and last of the inks etc but am keeping to the stark basic black and white this series started with. The idea of the series was to help me to get back some grip on mental visualization as well as some sense of the discipline needed to work through a consistent range of work among all the pain and illness and there has been plenty of that. The images take me through some new ground and point to work in the future.

The last couple of computer crashes fried the software and I am struggling a lot with free image processing programs. My old version of Photoshop does not like my machine and crashes if I tax it by using it to process full sized files. As I am processing the files to publish they must be big so I scream and hit the keyboard a lot, Zoner Draw 5 (is that one word?) is a gem and I have loved it ever since I learn t to use CorelDraw 3 but could not afford to own it. ZD may not be CorelDraw but it has all the features I needed.

The paintings are on hold. When the illness was at it’s worst I wasted a lot of canvas trying to get my head around concepts and visualize images although there are still a lot of works that went where I wanted them to go and which I find very beautiful. I am em enjoying the feeling of growing I get from the drawing and prints and I see in them just as much beauty. Is it beauty I strive for? Not so much I suspect. I almost said there is not so much a striving as there is an outflow. The pressure of images and ideas within see me striving to express them and thus the outflow becomes material. And now I retreat back into the half world of pain killers and not feeling too good. Somewhere in there will be moments I can make images and art and feel fulfilled.

Strangely those things like the sun on the lakes and the birds and the wind and my family and beautiful women and hot rods and art that has unexpectedly turned out are beautiful and precious and bring me joy no matter how shitty my body feels. They are more beautiful because I know what despair feels like