photos and walking

today i went walking around my hood again. It was curious to work out that the plastic sheeting in the rubbish tip areas are actually tent like structures that people sleep in. Found taking photos okay. People were generally friendly and i didn't feel threatened - people are really nice.

I like the hand made structures for drying clothes. like how things are tied. Like how they unintentionally make abstract paintings of layers of found board or tape over holes. purpose - where i just see abstract art.

Got confused again;

I wanted to paint or draw representationally again
maybe just draw bits that i like - like the repeated patterns of lamp post things, or the weave of the baskets, of observational drawings of tied things, like the elastic that they use.

Wanted to make things myself - but also want to draw stuff in a traditionally way - like colour and like mixing paint - but not sure if I should be painting of just taking photos??

I think way too much - and should be reading what other people say when they think about their practice.

I don't care that re looking at modernism is done to death. - there is more for me to do and that's all that counts.

interested in humanism - but I'm sort of a hypocrit - i don't like people really their mental space is too heavy on my brain, i like thinking about what they have left behind - their objects.

reading

Just reading Myth: A very short introduction by Robert A. Segal.

On page 41 he talks about I - it and I - thou distinctions. As how we currently see the world as an 'it' not a person, but how in the past we saw the external world as a person. How interesting to think about this in the currently climate of using up the earths resources and pollution. Maybe we should start again to think or  consider the world as a person that has needs and something we should respect, perhaps be fearful of as our negligence may cause the world to react negatively to us.

also linking to the French philosopher whos name I've totally forgotten who wrote about the modern city and how we conduct ourselves in the city scrificing our freedom for this imagined 'other' - this myth of the city as a person.

Big things or Small things

Been thinking about big gestures. The grand colour field paintings of abstract expressionism. Can't do it, tried it just doesn't fit with what I like. Feel like my works should be big but with pieces of paper and small lines they don't look right, they look tried to hard or pictures of pictures.

feel freer about making at the moment.

liking non functional things that look like they have a sort of purpose.

I like agnes martin but not the big paintings.

Feel like I should look at Richard tuttle again. - i like paint and I like paper, and wood and bits of string.

I don't to be avantgarde but backwards. Something old and reused - something stayed. I like rusted things. Everything is new - everybody is buying new reusable bags. I don't see old bags - just new reusable ones.