Synapse #6

Synapse #6/you divided the world. Acrylic paint on canvas. 30 x 41 cm. Julie Clarke, 2010

OK, this is the sixth small painting I've done since I've been living in Hawthorn (if you are new to my blog you can locate photos of the other paintings under October). Number seven will also be small, but I may go a little larger for the one after that. I'd like to exhibit them in the flesh, so to speak with a view to selling them. However, my next project, still being negotiated involves exhibiting some of the photographs I took during 2009/2010 on multiple monitors accompanied by poetic texts. Another 'virtual' showing. I'll keep you all posted as to whether this happens, when and where. I've been reading J.G. Ballard's 1970 novel The Atrocity Exhibition and in this edition he accompanies the writing with annotated text, which I'm trying not to read, but in fact gives an insight into how the writing came about. So, in the spirit of James Graham I'm going to give a short explanation of this painting. I was looking at one of the only paintings I still have from 1992 and there is an area, similar to the elliptical shape in the painting above, so I reproduced that and then placed a dividing line to denote the way that we create otherness and yet that other is surely still part of what we are. I then wrote the text, which can be completed in the viewers mind, with any number of possible permutations. I like the way that text becomes an object in itself. I punctuated this mornings blog to feed the baby Magpies who now happily eat the bread that I throw onto the grass ~I feel that there is a bit of a routine happening here. But isn't that the measure of our day ~ the things that connect us to the world, that make us feel like we are part of something greater, a machinery of the universe that keeps moving along with or without our intervention? I clench my fist to allow my fingers to move in a different way than they do when I am typing. The thumb on my right hand bends slightly to the left ~ the arthritis that has already invaded my skeletal system is advancing, though the bodies of others are worse ~ I am grateful, and it is good to be grateful, to appreciate what parts of the body still functions, knowing that at some time they too will break down. For the moment though, all is well. It's a crisp, cool morning. Quiet and still. Soon I'll be heading off to Uni to tutor.