From Barbara’s Garden
Everything seems to be changing. WordPress is demanding I recognize and use something called Gutenberg. I have a new computer with Windows 10 which has, so far, not been able to find my emails. I really hate Microsoft and I have been on the net since before they existed and then through all those years where they bullied all the smaller software creators and then finally where they are big enough to ignore us and make the world they want.
The web hosting package is upgrading and will no longer recognize some of the Windows 7 software, especially the email package.
The future holds long, energy sapping, struggles with administration and software just to keep dog paddling where I am
The things that refuse to change include the brutality of the cold in here. And the impost of the cluttered dusty little hole that my possessions are stuffed into.
My mother has been transported about by carers since she gave up her car. She was often away for a couple of hours while her little Maltese Terrier was forced to wait at home. If it was lonely it would bark and yelp. One of the neighbors complained to the office at their aged resort and my mother was given the ultimatum to either make it stop or be forced to lose it or be evicted. She asked me to look online for a solution.
Maltese Terrier in a bag from the internet
Edog Australia had a collar that sprayed lavender so I ordered one of those as well as two ultrasonic anti-barking devices from elsewhere on Ebay. The order was made mid-week and when Edog heard how distressed my mother was they had the collar hand delivered in just a day. She went out next day and after a few hours out came home to a little angel that didnt even jump all over her and bark like crazy when she got home as it had done in the past. It looks as though the collar is very effective. The ultrasonic devices arrived a week later and have not been used yet although I convinced her to test them and if they work to keep one in the cupboard as a backup in case the collar becomes ineffective.
The space where the paintings are being created causes all sorts of difficulties. While there is a lush and beautiful image being created it is among the damaged and dirty surfaces of the majority of the canvases. The loss of a place to make complex surfaces has pushed my work to something akin to a blind flailing about in colored mud. There is hope and there is beauty but what a bitter and expensive loss of all that has gone before. The ability to work within a cocoon of excellence based on years of study and practice has become this desperate attempt to overcome dirt, squalor and discomfort. I grieve for what should be.
Strelitzia. One that worked and survived the squalor. It is quite uplifting to be able to enjoy beautiful things growing. The cameras still struggle with focusing on the glazes
It may be two weeks since the contracts to administer the NDIS was signed over to a provider and there has been no news and no sign of the copies of the contracts in the mail. I cannot remember what we discussed or if it was fruitful or if we agreed on much. I think I covered some of that in the last post. I need services but the same things that place a barrier on the ability to make art here create barriers to services. The NDIS roll over was way back in April and still nothing has happened here apart from some other wasted administrative effort.
There is a plan to build a body of work for an exhibition. It is just that each time I spread my figurative wings and begin to create the work much of it is damaged or limited by the situation and not worth showing. It hurts. It rips away at my insides like small animals are in there. So much expense to get the paints and there are still bits of equipment that will never be practical in here. One day its black sticky grime and another it is dragging my broken body between the piles of equipment and canvases. The visions of possibilities I could command are like a hot iron in the hands of emotional and spiritual torturers. I want to write about art and this is what art is right now. I wonder how Gauguin would have appeared to Twitter or Facebook had they existed all those years ago. Or wonderful and slightly insane Dali? There would not be a Blue Poles because the artist would have been busy filling out the paperwork for welfare and housing and some community scheme for alcoholics. He would have been unable to even get a pot of paint swinging in the tiny social housing apartment he would be limited to. Don’t fool yourself. We have lost all of that potential right across our society and in the light of how determined you all are to continue enriching yourselves at any expense and breeding and offering our communities up as life rafts to a global population boom it may never return to anything but deeper and more perversely lowered expectations and potential.
Barbara’s little garden is one of the things that spreads a little light and cheer for me. I have always believed that putting care and compassion into a garden is rewarded by a reflection of those qualities in growing beautiful plants.