One more time with feeling...

I know it when I feel it...

There is a starting point.

It isn't a photographic image.

More than an image there is an urge.

First strokes of a brush pen.

I am taken up, defined in a curve.

First angles, first volumes of the body.

Whose body?

Whose body will it be?

Verticality.

Crosshatching.

Lettering, familiar scribbled lettering.

EXHAUSTED.

Change implement.

Where's that red BIC pen?

I need that red BIC pen.

I need it's cut into the paper.

I need it's disresepect.

I had some time, some peace, some desire.

Going back to school.

I had been working on my drawing technique, academically, like I used to do at school.

I hated it.

There are moments when my soul erupts in revolt at constraints which I have accepted being imposed on myself.

There are moments when I feel the need to return to basics - "What the fuck is perspective?"

Oh that loaded word "ARTIST".

Oh I hate labels: writer, artist, academic, researcher, all that malarkey.

We are all imposters.

I feel reassured learning more about the voices of artists behind their work.

Picasso that archetype who would altenate between "studies" -  careful "drawing" and apparent flourishes of revolt.

The artist was inseparable from the man, the lover, the refugee.

A man who at times fell into despair when thinking of the appearance of photography.

What should an artist do when faced with "photorealism"?

"I might as well kill myself"... he thought.

"Picasso decided to paint what he felt not what he saw."

Flashmobbing...

So I am tagging along with INKTOBER...

Who are the artists, hobbyists, inconnus in INKTOBER inseparable from?

DISMALAND INSTAGRAM? 
DISMALAND TWITTER? 
DISMALAND FACEBOOK?

What the hell am I doing here?
What the hell are we doing here.

I can only speak for myself.

I have enough context of my own without questioning that of others....

Stop asking too many questions.

Do it, fuck it, do it.

Do it if you feel it.

I am accepting the constraint, the weird prompts, the challenge, pushing myself to submit to the crowd.

I want to find out where it will take me, what I will learn along the way. 

Writing here, now, is my way of finding my way, of reflecting on the task in hand.

I can feel that crowd, that mob excitement, hysteria  violence even in INKTOBER.

Doing "INKTOBER" I feel distracted and perturbed by the stream upon stream of cartoon monsters.

I feel alienation from fucking venomous superheroes, fantasy novella charicatures, Disney fairies, princesses, princes.

I look at the profiles, hobbyist, artist, please DM for commissions.

I wonder at times what the fuck INKTOBER means?

What does it mean to me?

What does any flashmob drawn together mean?

What does it matter?

It doesn't matter.

Do it, fuck it, do it.

Is it a community, a souk, a gallery, a supermarket, a trading floor, a show?

Yes, all of that.

Do I feel alone together?

I feel at times that I am in Mangaland, Mangledland, Dismaland perhaps?

Dismaland...

I was reading yesterday about Banksy's Dismaland.

"Banksy's Dismaland: amusements and anarchism in artist's biggest project yet."

Well actually I was reading about his pièce de résistance (really?) the shredded balloon girl.

Banksy artwork self-destructs after selling at auction for £1m – video https://t.co/2jpCZK2aXf

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) October 7, 2018

Good old Banksy, apparently he's added 50% of value to his shredded and signed screen print.

He's even been tagging on to a Basquiat exhibition.

Basquiat's value is ballooned with rarity as a member of the 27 CLUB.

TWELVE GREAT ARTISTS WHO DIED AT THE AGE OF TWENTY SEVEN

Banksy is already too old, too knowing for that.

Two new Banksy artworks appear on wall of Barbican centre

BRITART.

I have been studying artland these past few days....

There was Damien Hirst laughing all the way to the bank...the richest living "artist".

Sharks in suits, sharks in formaldelhyde, cows and calves cut in two with chain saws.

Jewelled skulls, subcontracted spot paintings.

Then there was Francis Bacon and his abattoir art.

Abused, deranged, skin canvas scarred with life.

He had skin in the game, and blood on his hands.

The lunatics have escaped the asylum....

Art is an asylum, it appears....

I watched a great documentary about "Outsider Artists".

And I think to myself, that art or this stuff here is indeed an asylum, a means of escape, or is it the only real way not to escape?

And I think about the self-promotional reputational economy in academia, in artland, in celebrity land, or in sham-democracyland.

 I feel a desperate need to find escape or at least to protest.

I suppose whatever the motivation behind the lines, between  the lies, behind the dollar signs, behind the hashtags, behind the crosshatching, there is something innately moving about this human need for scratching out an existence thus...

We are caught quaking between light and darkness, finding shading between sense and nonsense.

How shall we flesh out our bare bones?

Who will choose which marks of ours live on?

Who the fuck cares?

We all end up in shreds.