Dear Cleo
Well it was been a funny year in which I learned a lot, some of which I maybe didn’t need to learn but was schooled in anyway.
I have finished part 4 of the course and all that remains is to reflect on what I have done.
I sensed at the beginning of the course that this part of the course would be challenging and in actually doing this part of the course I proved myself right.
Something changed, I acted strange, why I’ll never know (TM Presley E) my definition of drawing and art and maybe even life was broadened. I completed reading Petherbridge which helped, I suppose now I get to graduate to a 500 page book by Maurice Merleau- Ponty with no pictures in it, that has been glaring malevolently from the bookshelf at me for some time
Is Photoshop and the camera art? As much as I have fought against it the answer is of course yes and it is now my duty to become a Photoshop geek in order that I can take full advantage of it as an artistic tool rather than using it to square up images of my work or de-pixilating it so that they don’t fill the blog too quickly. Leonardo was inventing science in his spare time, who am I to act as a Luddite and deny science’s very existence.
By a circuitous route I discovered printing (Using assignment 2 as a Christmas card, you will have to wait until the publication of the Parallel Project on the collaboration with printers for a fuller description)and also discovered by visiting Rembrandt, Durer, Raphael and Raimondi exhibitions that this was old hat.
I now have a print of Hitler on my wall that causes some my visitor’s discomfiture, until it is put into context and explained that artists also were persecuted for their minds, regardless of their beliefs, religion or ethnic origin. I am not the explainer, I am merely the artist who is beginning to understand the artistic merit of a situation.
God bless those who died at 9/11, in particular the 34 accountants who died at the Pentagon and precluded accounts being provided for the Pentagon in 2001 to 2002, when they had already unaccounted for $2.6 trillion in 2000 to 2001. It surely isn’t necessary for an artist to be political or a judge but then, maybe it is. As an apolitical person I am becoming a political artist and judgemental
There are so many unanswered questions from part 4 but I am glad of my ability to complete it without knowing all the true answers. It has given me serious cause for thought which I hope one day to resolve.
On the plus side I made the dogs of a few drawings, and maybe there it should rest, the marks and shades on a piece of grey paper expressing my outward beliefs, no tears and no heartbreak.
I hope the foregoing wasn’t too heavy, but having written it I am more relaxed, you relax also my darling and don’t worry about your granddad, he is well and more understanding of the world and its wiles.
My love as always
Mickos xx
Dear Cleo 