sometime last week i flipped my couch over and threw a piece of glass on top of it for cutting stencils. I still haven’t put everything back in it’s neat and proper place. It’s nice to feel like I’m an artist again. I’m actually making art and thinking about it a lot. What I want to say. How I want to say it. How to make people pay attention to what I have to say. The audience is important to me. I don’t make art “just cause I like to do it”. I feel that what I say, when I say it, the way that I say it, people respond positively to it. They tell me they like what they see. They tell me it makes them think about things. I enjoy making other people think about things that I think about. That’s communication, right? I don’t care much for ‘artist status’, or noteriety but i do care to have people listen. To acknowledge my existence. To shoot me in the face every now and then so I know that I’m still alive and not a ghost.
On top of the glass, on top of the overturned couch is a box of oil paints. Some have been given to me. Some I bought today along with a bunch of brushes, some fresh canvases, some mineral spirits and some paint thinner. I saw a guy’s paintings the other day that made me really want to paint. Stencils have their place. I know I am good, technically, at stencilling. I have many things I want to say through my street art – through stencils on the street. Street stencils have the wonderful virtue of being in someone’s way even if they don’t want to look. There they are, right on Robson. Right on Granville. Right on Davie. You can’t ignore it cause it’s so out of place, because most people don’t take the time out of their lives to go through the effort of making something meaningful or beautiful in public places. Most people are too wound up in the race, the pursuit of success and happiness to seek that in something that is socially interactive. When i see a street stencil i think to myself, someone took the time to meticulously cut, place and spray that stencil so that when I walk down the street we can be connected. It transcends time and space, atleast for the day or so that it stays up before some city fuck paints over it. But that is their perogative. To silence the speaking ones in the name of business and capitalist progress. Power to you. Power to you. I’ve never been happy with a single stencil that I have put on canvas. My oil paintings will be for a different purpose. The end result is to have them hung in someone’s domain. That is an awfully different environment than the transience of the street. Oil takes time. It’s a slow medium. And i find that attractive.
I need a studio. This apartment is too small for two. I need a studio. I want to make noise. I want to make a mess. I want a space seperate from my studio for living. with nice oak furniture, earth tones. natural fibres, grains and fabrics. Lots of light. High ceilings would be nice. Oak floors would be nice. But for the studio – a garage would be ideal. A garage with a renovated second floor would be ideal. Chance that I should be offered just that today from a woman who randomly told me she loves my paintings and admires my street art and thinks I should live in the suite above her garage. I would bargain for space in the garage. The problem is the location – too far from the hustle and heartbeat of downtown. Too pastoral. Not enough grit. I need some grit. I like the EastSide. I feel at home over here. Things usually fall in to my lap when they are supposed to. In that I seem to suggest I believe in destiny, which I need to clarify that I do not. Just that sometimes it is nice to not worry. To figure that that which does not kill you makes you stronger. And that a positive life leads in positive directions. I believe that i determine my own destiny, and that sometimes it is not even a necessary action that breeds the desired change but that also thought can do that as well. Read about string theory. My mind isn’t really that far from yours. physically. it’s not. there’s really just a bunch of molecules seperating us. and all those molecules interact with each other. So, ESP isn’t really that far off. neither is levitation. neither is willing things in to existence simply through thought. That’s what i mean by things falling in to my lap.
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