The answer

This might be the first time I feel like I've done a proper grown-up paper. Might be.

And finally

Absorption, interpretation, neglection, repetition, 20x16"

Seek and you may find, 16x12"

These two have been hanging around unfinished for quite a long time now, passing though several incarnations each before arriving at what you see above. These are the first two canvases I've completed since May [Ed. What about 'I go to sleep?'] and they feel like they are moving things on.

I go to sleep

Last week's works in progress are still in progress and unfortunately in a less finished state than last week. I shall persevere and perhaps next week one or both will make another appearance. In the mean time, I think I have finally put this bugger to rest.

The canvas has had more incarnations that a thing with a lot of incarnations. It started out a few years ago as a pop art flower, before impacting with a night of out-of-this-world Sun Ra tributary music . This incarnation suffered from the never knowing when to quite problem, before being pushed into an even stupider place.

At the end of last week I spread some very lumpy plaster on it and then prompty ignored the resulting mess, figuring that once again I had made an arse of it. However, when I was stuck waiting for the other two works-in-progress dry, I had a little fiddle with it. A drippy, splashy fiddle. I then left it too to dry.

A few days later, I was sorting through my pile of text and something in the 'grinning' quote and this one just clicked. I had a slightly sinister chuckle, then spent longer than seems feasible figuring out where the text would fit on the canvas. Eventually I got it to work (the canvas is now flipped 180º from its earlier incarnations), before adding a little garden twine and declaring it finished. (Well, for this year!)

It won't be long

At last I've managed to create something I quite like. The angles were formed with thread on the wet plaster surface, very quickly and with little pre-meditation. Now to see if I can build a series from this. Damn. I think I'm calling this one finished!

Hold onto this

Another not right piece here. I think I was intimidated by its larger size. The composition and balance is all wrong and the leaf looks completely out of place. This has been sitting about for a few weeks and I'm no closed to finding a solution for it. The clock is ticking now, though.

Canvas D strikes again

It won't lie down and die this one. After weeks of staring at the broken plaster, I decided that it looked crap and hacked it all off. Where this will go next is beyond me right now.

Canvas D

This one has been on the go for a few weeks now. It's undergone a fair amount of change since it last appeared here and yet I am still uncertain of it. Somehoe it has become more of an assemblage than a painting. Is this what I want to do? Don't I want to actually use a brush on occasion? I think I may wish to.

The main relevant question here, though, is is this finished? Don't answer that, because I'm not going to. At best, I may call it 'almost ready' or something similar. None of that talk of being finished, thank you very much.

You will not die, it's not poison

I've got a lot of ideas swimming about in my head at the moment. Adding typography to my paintings is one of them, the idea being to add order to what is otherwise chaos.

My liking for type comes from my work as a magazine designer and for me that absolutely represents my ordered side. I enjoy it greatly and trying to find ways to bring that into my painting is a challenge. So far, I've been sticking to painting simple large letters. Here I've gone for a different approach entirely. I'm really pretty happy with how this has turned out, although ideally the paper would be thinnner.

There are a few other things here worth mentioning. The first is an addition of a photo, which I attempted to merge into the painting. I'm not too happy with how this particular instance turned out and so have covered a lot of it up with the type.

Secondly, there are the wires that are strung between carpet tacks, hammered into the outsides of the stretcher frame. I like how this looks and will almost certainly try it again. Hopefully I can get them to rust as well next time, although that may well might require using chemistry, which will almost certainly hurt my head.