Monthly Archives: June 2014

Sometimes* it would be nice to be able to take my brain out of my head and give it a good rinse in the kitchen sink.

*when lying awake at 2am on a school night with repetitive thoughts crawling round my brain

Henri Matisse
The Parakeet and the Mermaid
1952

London yesterday for Matisse at Tate Modern with my Mum; today it’s starting to work my way through the reports for my form, thousands of words that most kids probably won’t read (all they care about is the grades).

Sigh.

As my desk faces the park, to turn down the distractions and help me focus, I pull all the blinds to block out the concentration-destroying world. So it’s a daytime cave of focus, or at least it is for twenty minute bursts.

Haven’t got halfway through them of course. Deadline is 9am Wednesday. Guess what i’m going to be doing Tuesday after work? More work.

Went to an end-of-year exhibition at one of my old training schools this evening; I was looking back through the visitors comments book and saw that it went right back to 2006, when I was there. One of the comments was from my university mentor at the time, the one who I found out died late last year. It was a celebratory comment, congratulating the department on helping produce such individual work (capitalised in his loopy script).

I commented on this to my placement mentor and she told me that he hanged himself. That he planned it all out, wound up his affairs, and posted everything to his brother, so that by the time he received the information, he would be dead.

There are no words.

For the very first time in my life, I feel the need to have a stiff drink.

Rum, lime, ice and water it’ll have to be (end of month wine budgeting fail).

He inspired so many people on their way to doing good in this world. What a fucking loss.

Post- day with the kids at Kew Gardens
Post- new Pilates class
Post- a bit of washing up
Noodles on
Wine open
Golden light through the window
Dogs chasing after balls in the park opposite
Dancing about to Voodoo Ray in my underwear whilst I wait for my dinner to cook

A Good Evening

Some positivity with regards the future – actual things to look forward to – quelle shock!

First off, the post-grad artist teacher course is actually going ahead, as they’ve managed to get enough people to commit, so come the end of August I’ll be embarking upon formal learning for the first time in nine years. Yikes. I’m really looking forward to it, the challenge it will bring, and am hopeful that it will encourage me towards getting back to making my own work – which yes, I do at the moment with pottery, but in the sense of a kick up the backside with regards doing this more regularly.

Secondly, whilst trying to work out whether I could afford to go back to Colorado before the start of my course, I emailed by Favourite Aunt to see if she’d let me stay at her house for a couple of nights. Totally unexpectedly, she said that I could stay at hers for as long as I wanted :) :) :)

It’ll be different from last year in that the house will be full, with her, her husband (ugh) and kids, but being able to slash the cost of accommodation makes things SO much more affordable. So, super looking forward to that too.

Hurrah for positive things!