Routine, Lists and Nothingness ...

Well, I've cheered up since my last post!

My life is just in a state of flux at the moment, for one reason and another, but I have to say that the return of the school drop-off and school pick-up has felt incredibly beneficial to an up-tight Summer sufferer.

I've started running again, I'm doing a bit of boring work again...I have routine again!

Routine, for me, is the essence of accomplishment, and as long as I have a ridiculous, fat marker- pen list, blue tacked to a wall in front of me, I can accomplish!

Now, this list sometimes even features:

05.30. Wake Up

People are often shocked at this (possibly by the time) but usually by the fact that 'Wake up' is part of my list...

Well, if I am only able to cross one thing off a day, it makes me feel better than if I'd crossed off nothing at all...lists should be achievable, in my book (and my fat marker pen).

Actually, I have other sorts of list too, which are much more serious and ambitious, and slightly unachievable, but they are my 'long term' lists and, crikey, when I cross something off there, it feels SO good!

Over the last week or so, I've also been tidying and sorting (and yes, I managed to cross off 'sort piles of papers at the end of the bed' well and truly off!)...so my mind has become a little freer, which I'm sure has helped spark an idea for painting, which I wont write much about just yet, as it's still in a sort of infancy...

Last week I had to speak about synaesthesia at the British Science Festival in Guildford:

I played Judy Garland singing 'Over The Rainbow' (a '50's recording), and Elvis singing 'In The Ghetto' whilst the audience looked at my two paintings of the sound of the two singers' voices. I also handed 'round oranges, Maltesers and English Mustard for people to taste whilst they were looking at my paintings of those tastes...

(If you're a bit bewildered, you can visit my website)

Anyway, I'd done some of the paintings a while ago, and this talk I had to do, forced me to think again about sound, and how I paint it.

After doing a lot of voice portraits, I felt that I'd lost any 'feeling' for it; I felt my paintings had slipped simply into artistic notation.

So that's why I've been concentrating on painting things which I feel something strongly about inside: (the fear of the underneath of boats, shipwrecks, and of course telephone boxes)...and then last week, my feeling for sound and paint came back!

...and I'll hopefully keep you posted about that in the near future...

But just for now, I'm enjoying a bit of nothingness: Nothing amazing, nothing absolutely gorgeous, nothing particularly anything really...I'm just waiting...

amongst some of my sweet nothingnesses...

...all rooted by me!

It's a wonderful feeling to paint or create something you have a real passion and feeling for, even if it involves an element of nothing!

Up Close and Underneath...

Moving on

Then moving back

Stumbling forward

with things I lack...

.

Nothing ventured

sitting still

but nothing gained

with bitter pill...

.

A weekend through

I feel the same

inside out

with outside game

.

Am I tired?

Am I tough?

hardened through

the want of love

...

(an odd weekend...but with a new painting)

x

Sussex Salt and Trailer Trash...

I've been enjoying living by the sea over the last week and, in my opinion, there's nothing better than an Autumnal seaside...

I love how the elements manage to distort whatever they come into contact with, even though it also terrifies me, and I also love the feeling of warmth within cold.

Birling Gap is probably one of my favourite places in England...a simple, rock-pooling beach
which always pours sea-life sucess into any bucket, with an equally simple and satisfying cafe up at the top...

I also like the quiet beaches along the Sussex coast...the ones with the not-so-trendy beach huts...just because it's quiet, really, but also the textures of the more unkempt civic areas fascinate... and worry me at the same time...

'The Door To The Sea...is Jammed'!

The walls seemed scorched...by sea salt

However...all good, artistic things; things that are wonderfully creative for the body and soul, must come to an end...

As they did today:

Anyone who thinks filming or being an actress is in any way a glamourous occupation, prepare to be disillusioned!

Today, I did my day's filming on the new, comedy film 'Swinging with the Finkels' (and, yes, it really is about 'swinging', and yes I did have to say kinky stuff...anyway....)
It was all being done in a kind of hand-held, improvisational way...to the point where I'd never met my 'boyfriend' until I had to take my top off in the 'wardrobe trailer', where they were trying to work out how to make us look like a couple!

Luckily, my 'boyfriend' was a lovely man, and we had a real laugh, until we were led to the set where we had to 'improvise' on a constantly malting fur throw, and then be regularly de-furred (for continuity)...to the complete silence of an on-looking crew...

The job is an embarassing one at times, and at times I wonder what on earth...well, just what on earth!

Anyway, the make-up girls did a good job...

Also, a large part of filming is always spent in your 'trailer', with your name emblazoned across the door on a manky piece of A4 (or if you're really unlucky 'Lesbian 1', as was one I saw today!)

But the trailers are the most un-aesthetically pleasing waiting rooms you could imagine, with their dull lighting, even duller furniture and nervous dull actor inside.

So during the age I had to wait alone in the dim light, eagerly anticipating how 'funny' they were going to ask me to be, I embarked on trying to get some arty shots, imagining how I could convince bloggers that I was actually somewhere quite swish, or at least that William Eggleston had just popped in....

So:

But he hadn't and the reality was...

A corrugated metal-shutter-view from the window...

An all American home from home...

and, er...not much else!

Consequently, I'm finishing this post on a wonderfully rare K3...

designed, like the K2 by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, but made in concrete, as opposed to cast iron, introduced in 1929.

It was an unsucessful kiosk, due to its fabric, as the elements were not kind to it, and demanded too much up-keep...but how beautiful.

K3's, though incredibly rare, have to be a personal favourite...

There... I feel much better now!