Strange brew

It is approaching half past four in the afternoon and not a lot of sunlight is left in the sky, duck egg to the west, shading into deeper blues in the east. I'm back home in Scotland now and there is just not all that much light here. After spending nearly three months in Arkansas, it has come as something of a shock, this lack of daylight. I should be writing here about art, not light, however with jet lag still in full effect, it can be hard to stay focussed.

Art… right. Art.

Is there a conscious idea here?
© 2011 Stewart Bremner. Ink on paper.

Over the sleepless hours of the past few days, on two aeroplanes, a car, a bus and a train, across four and a half thousand miles and through three airports, I have felt something brewing deep inside. With that imperfect focus, that hands-grasping-soap-in-the-bath feeling when I think, I am not sure what exactly is brewing, nonetheless I know that it will become art.

Over most of this year, my painting has evolved into an means of expression. Abstract expressionism, for all of the baggage the term carries, best describes what I have painted: abstract paintings that express a particular moment in my life. Each one is a message in a bottle from the past, being carried ever forward on time's tide. What is brewing now, is what I expect to seed those next bottles with.

My hazy thoughts slip around in this messy brew of ideas and words. Identity, belonging, memory and distance shine in the murk. Will they figure in the work? Perhaps. I can't say. A number of strange scribbled sketches are dotted in two different books and again I wonder what their relevance is. They are neither on a medium or in a material I think I will use but again I cannot be sure.

Somewhere nearby lurks revelation. Wakefulness is what I seek first.