the Unstuck Diaries

I don't think you need to square anything. You're a damn good painter, but you're not exclusively a painter.

As an artist, you shoulde perhaps seek to take hold of whichever concept or vision you're currently inspired by and take it as far as your imagination will allow.

If that happens to be an evil cart, then so be it. When the desire to paint [as opposed to the guilt of not painting] becomes all-consuming, then you'll paint.

Just my thoughts, Tim [by e-mail because the comments are misbehaving]

How do you square this (an Evil Cart) with this (Reclining Nude)?

Well, they seem square in my head, if you see what I mean, and now I'm going
to try to explain why (gulp)

You feel (for so your question hints and your previous piece states) that the Reclining Nude
is Proper Art - it took lots of preparation and a long time to paint and years of skill and a lot of thought and feeling and it has a "classical" feel to it but with an original
look too.

And I'd guess that you drew this cart fairly quickly.
BUT that doesn't mean that it too didn't take lots of preparation and years of skill and a lot of thought and feeling - it was just subconscious rather than
the more conscious planning you do for a big oil painting. And yet it's
definitely you - it has the life and originality and interest - what is it? what's going on?

I think it is a Good Thing to draw what you feel like drawing, no matter what that is. And I also think it is a Good Thing to work in different media and in different styles. And I may know comparatively little about art, but I do
know that artists who always do the same thing are DULL. And you never do the same thing, it's just that these are more different than you are used to.

Oh all RIGHT then, this: http://www.ashley-jackson.co.uk/ He learned to do
that yonks ago and I love the landscape that he paints: it's just that I think his paintings are all the same and I can't say why (but you can).
I marvel at why his paintings don't do it for me
when the landscape that he paints very much does. To me there seems something
lacking, a passion missing - although he claims to have that passion, I don't feel it from his work. I get more of a feel for the landscape from Joe Cornish's photos http://www.joecornish.com/ than from Ashley Jackson's paintings.
I find it hard to write about visual things (give me a poem to criticise and I'm much more comfortable) but I suppose if you pinned me against the wall and said WHAT ARE THESE ABOUT I would say that this reclining nude is a celebration of youth and feminine beauty painted with passion and I would say that the Evil
Carts are a slightly ironic take on anger and fear and unpleasantness drawn with passion.