As you know, I don’t drink alcohol… well I do sometimes, but I have such a low tolerance to alcohol that I literally get drunk on one glass of wine… and so I usually don’t bother.
I’m what you might call a cheap date.
However, I have been known to let my (grey) hair down on holidays and have on a couple of occasions woken up naked on a hard tiled hotel bathroom floor with my head somewhere between the big while porcelain telephone and the bathroom bin after getting stupid the night before treating Sangria or some other local tipple without the respect that it deserves…
… with my wife standing over me with that look, fully dressed, saying,
“… the coach taking us on that excursion for which we paid 30 Euros each
will be here in 20 minutes… I’ll be in the foyer…”
… and I know it’s going to be one of those days no matter how much I promise to all saintly entities,
“… never again…”
It’s my birthday today and for prezzies I got a couple of canvasses and some paints.
When you’re an artist you’re easy to buy presents for.
With me, you can keep your socks and your ties…
Brushes… canvas… paints… acrylics or watercolours… I can’t be bothered waiting a whole damn week for oils to dry… although I love the smell of oil paints…
I love painting and being immersed in anything artistic.
When I’m painting I feel that I’m really me. More than anything… when I’m in my art… I’m me…
Time is immeasurable… irrelevant… I’m in flow… in the zone…
I’ve been working on painting my version of Paul Cézanne’s “Still Life with Onions”.
Cézanne’s the man as far as I’m concerned… he’s one of my favourite painters… him… Van Gogh… and of course…. “show me the Monet”… and others…
To be honest, I really can’t make up my mind as to who my favourite artist is…
Damn it! I’m a Libran… I can’t make up my mind if I’m indecisive or not…
I like Cézanne’s work as he has a particular Attention Deficit Disorder type of style to his work…
I can just see him losing his temper with impatience as he’d stab, parry and thrust at his canvas… yet being totally absorbed in the moment… trying to capture over and over again his vision of Mont Sainte-Victoire…
It must have been a terrific time with those guys chewing the fat and shooting the breeze together… Renoir, Cézanne, Monet, Manet… taking a pop at the establishment with their embryonic style of impressionism… dissing the snobbery that went with the established art world at that time…
… and then came Van the Man and Guaguin…
… in a house solely rented for getting lost in art… and a yellow house to
boot… some baccy… paints and of course Absinthe.
I tried some Absinthe a couple of years ago on holiday.
A couple of swigs… grabbed my paints, brushes and pad… headed for the poolside and went for it… yes… I’ve been known to live dangerously occasionally…
With the hot sun beating down… a head full of mega-throbs and getting into the zone… I thought if it was good enough for Van the Man, then it was good enough for me… but Van the Man didn’t have his wife on the next sunbed giving him that look…
Some of my drunken artistic efforts would turn out ok… while others would look like the remnants of the wrapper of a half eaten doner kebab discarded by some drunken yob on a Saturday night…
While working on my latest painting I’ve been imagining all those great artists who’ve trotted off to the promised land…
Just imagine… Manet, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne… and Dali… Van Gogh,,, Guaguin … Warhol and Francis Bacon… all in the same smoky Gauloises-hazed room… around a table… and a bottle Absinthe…
Just imagine the conversation… the arguments… the discussions… and more importantly… the passion…
… just imagine…
… that passion…
I know what my passion is…
Do you know what yours is?
I hope you do…
I really do…
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Good blog Alex, know the feeling well on the demon drink, had my last good binge in the early 70’s, woke up to bite marks round the toilet bowl, and a hangover that lasted two days, END OF. same with ciggies, gave up 30 years ago, hated smelling like a bonfire that had been used for burning manure. But still got my painting vice, I too do acrylic, knock out a painting in a day, wish I could sell them though. Had a little break from it but got a charity auction of a nice big fluffy German Shepherd, but that won’t get done in a day, far too many colours. ‘Laughed at the dentist blog, I’m with them !!!!!
Take care and thanks for all your help
Hi there Arlene.
Many thanks for your comment.
Wow – a painting a day – I don’t know how you do it; not just the quantity, but the brilliant quality of your paintings at http://www.colliepaintings.com
“… bite marks around the toilet bowl…”
heh heh heh…
Well done with your own blogs too. Keep at it.
Feel free to ask for help any time… no peoblem.
Many thanks once again and happy blogging and happy painting.