http://www.agracefuldeath.blogspot.com/ for the A Graceful Death exhibition coming to London in February, keep checking for details
antonia.rolls1@btinternet.com to email me.
So. No Excuses Now.
It is back to the studio with no kids at home and none forecast for the week. During the day, that is. 13 Year Old Son will return from school later and can come in to the house.
I am sitting at my computer, I have much to do and all of it is up to me to organise, make happen, plug away at. What is this? The life of an artist is not about painting. If I just painted I would grow a beard and end up like Howard Hughes. I have a family to run, a house to maintain and that is just in my spare time. No one will see my paintings, hear my name or know anything about me unless I tell them and so I have to keep telling people I Am Here. Come Look At My Work. That takes time, and organisation, and courage. So today I am starting at the beginning and have the following to do
- Plan the next PR campaign for the A Graceful Death exhibition coming to London at the end of February. I have done the paintings, though there is one more I want to do, of my dear friend's father hours before he died. She has some wonderful images of him, and she was the only one of her family to get to him in time. Her story is powerful.
- Get some funding from somewhere to pay for the exhibition. Any donations welcome.
- Paint a lovely little picture of a lovely little girl. It is late and I must contact the Commissioner and confess it is late. Hate doing that.
- Paint a still life of flowers in and urn, and this too is late. I have contacted the Commissioner and all is well but I need to do it
- Get the wood prepared for the still life. If I have not got a good piece, I must go and buy one and cut it down and sand and prepare it blah blah blah but I should have done this a good while ago.
- Oh dear. Two wedding gift paintings need to be done. I am woefully behind on these. I am doing them as wedding gifts and feel awful about the time they have taken to even think about. It is because they have to be fitted into paid work and exhibition timetables. However, got to do them.
- Doing an interview for a magazine about A Graceful Death. Got to get my thoughts together. Am I going to talk sense? Of course. It is all I ever do talk. In my own way.
So there is much to do and the worst part is the before-you-start pulling together of ideas from the ether around you, so that something concrete can come of it. I am in that place now.
Interesting. Yesterday I knew today was The Day. Have To Start. And yesterday I could not stop eating. So on going to bed I decided if I was this hungry, I needed 3 good solid meals today to stop this bottomless hunger. It felt quite exciting, and I thought I would start the day with a kind of USA Diner Breakfast where the waffles just keep coming and the eggs are flipped over in the pan. What a reason to get up in the morning. But on waking, and even now, hours later, I have completely lost my appetite. I am more distressed about this than the Plucking New Business From The Ether. What kind of God is it that takes away an Artist's appetite at the last minute and condemns her to the hopeless memory of a Large Meal? When will I eat again? Why when I have the answer to the Hungry All The Time dilemna, does the question disappear? I have had tea. I am waiting for a space in my tummy for breakfast. There is none. I am doomed to do my Plucking From The Air stuff on an empty stomach and the way I feel, there won't be a gap until much later this afternoon.
John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, they wouldn't have worried about the loss of a meal. Meals were nothing to them. They got on with the business of knocking out the bad guys, probably on will power alone. They didn't need Eggy Toast to start the day. They slept lightly in their clothes and leapt up at dawn to Get The Job Done, and only later when someone handed them a sandwich, would they feel the faint pangs of hunger.
When I was about 6, my Grandad told me if I didn't eat my cornflakes I wouldn't look like Cassius Clay. Oh Hell! I thought in my 6 year old mind. This is Terrible! So I ate my cornflakes and begged Grandad to tell me I was going to be like Cassius Clay.
Oh well. Pretend I have had my breakfast and hope lunch will work out. Or I will lose my connection with Cassius Clay.
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