A Week In Short Order
On the 3rd of March I visited London’s Guildhall, St Paul’s Cathedral, found my way to the Southbank and visited the Bankside Gallery. I found the cheapest art book shop ever! There were shelves and shelves of books about individual artists or movements, and I don’t remember seeing any over £10! I wondered what it would be like to be an artist in residence. That would be a pretty cool thing to consider. I’ve always kind of thought that title would have a fair bit of responsibility, which I don’t like the sound of. I mean, if someone were to say, and here we have our artist in residence, and there’s me drawing stick figures, I guess that would be kind of embarrassing. I don’t like how in Cathedrals, when you go into the sort of.. tomb part, people are walking all over the memorial stones. I mean, they are set in the floor and I think you’re supposed to, but I can’t it feels too weird, just ignoring those people being commemorated under your dirty sneakers. I was thinking also, for me painting is emotion, and I’m not a very subtle person. That would explain why I don’t particularly like subtle paintings. Not usually anyway. I just don’t feel subtleties. That would be why I liked Romanticism. Oh! And I had another thought, stupid really, but I always wondered how you can get a really pure looking white highlight. Well, if you finish the rest of the painting and varnish it and then paint the white highlights, I bet that would make them stand out, right?! Ah got to try it, sounds like a good idea to me.
4th March, I visited Chinatown, Royal Academy of Art, and the National Gallery…
5th March, I found the Natural History Museum and the V&A Museum, I forget what V and A were… Haha I almost went to the science museum, but was like, hey, I’m by myself and this is a place for kids with all those ‘hands on’ things. Maybe not. Just after that though I went into the Natural History Museum. Lol. There were heaps of kids on school trips, and for some weird and unimaginable reason, a fair few couples hanging out. Why would you …? Aye, I don’t understand it either.
6th, having talked to mum on the phone I decided to find Dr Johnson’s House, then the Barbican and the Museum of London. Dr Johnson wrote the first dictionary which didn’t say things like ‘Black; a colour’ I didn’t actually see stuff in the Barbican that day, deciding to come back later, as it was full as when I got there. The Museum of London was pretty cool, although it took me till I was halfway through the first exhibition to realize it was a Museum all about London.
7th, went to Petticoat Lane and Brick Lane. At first I felt like the area was really seedy and I really wouldn’t want to be there in the evening. When I went into the Brick Lane markets, though, I began to feel the cool vintage vibe, and could see how it would be a pretty cool place to be as a student. I loved that indoor market, sooo many cool things. The power went out though, so I couldn’t see it all, and found myself using my phone to light up things in the stalls and some people lit tea light candles, my kind of place.
I think I had a pretty lazy day on the 8th, but on the 9th I went to the Tate Britain which was pretty cool. I like portraits, and there were plenty to see there. I wrote some names of artists that I liked, such as Sargent Martin West, Leighton, Francis Danby, and George F Watts.
I saw the big Henry Moore exhibition too, don’t remember where that was. I never really connect with sculpture – the shapes don’t make sense to me and the textures don’t show me anything. I tried really hard this time though, since I’d paid a bit of money to see the stuff and I know Henry Moore is a pretty influential sculptor. By the end I could at least appreciate the softness of the hard materials and the forms and ideas. Which is further than I’ve ever got before.
I was trying really hard to spend as little money as possible, and had only one saucepan. The combination of these things caused me to eat some pretty crap meals, which lead to some really weird dreams. I had two consecutive dreams in the early hours of one morning. The dream was a bit of a murder mystery, without the murder part. In that world everyone could change into a particular animal, and one person in the dream turned into a rat that attacked me. I awoke, turned over and fell back to sleep. In my next dream it was my seventeenth birthday, and I was at home, only we’d moved house. From our kitchen window, which looked onto a pavement beside a main road, I could see Auckland city behind the west harbour bridge. There was a bus stop, a hose pipe and an electric stand beside it, one of those ones you use for a caravan. As I watched two massive men came to use the pump. One looked Chinese, and the other looked like a Ninja Turtle. Back inside I was sitting in my bedroom choosing colours of long curling ribbon with lots of friends around me. I’m gonna name some names, cause this part is weird as, and you won’t get how weird it is otherwise. Well in my room with me was Natalie, Kate, Jess and Hannah, I think Courtney and Vanessa were there but they didn’t speak, and Harmony was there sitting on my window ledge. The window looked on to the roof, but we were all sitting on the floor and so couldn’t see out. We all got a massive fright when a bird came too close to the window and was eaten by the crocodile which was lying on the roof next to Harmony.
Am I weird?
Tiafish xoxox
