Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Animal

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A few details from a work in progress...we'll call it Animal.

Here, if I had a way of communicating with YouTube, there would be an embedded video for the song Animal by Chrome. I'm still obsessing over Chrome...it happens sometimes.

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I'm sitting in the mess hall at a booby hatch. A nurse comes in with his hollow eyed charges. He eyes me up and down and explains that he "needs" me to move to the other side of the room. He's down speaking to me...I think that's what it's called...emphasizing the last syllable of each sentence instead of tailing off. It's a technique used by army NCOs, prison guards and telemarketers.

"F---- what you NEED."

No...I just ignored him and came out into the fresh air. I'm not a patient there...I don't work for him...don't know him from Adam's house cat. There's ways to talk to people you don't know...that's not one of them. Especially not around here.

I'm not one yer patients...yet.

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I will be though if I don't find an easier way to post.

11 comments:

  1. Glorious art. I would love to see this in real life too. How big?
    As for the man at the 'mess hall at a booby hatch' (I have no idea what that is) - I don't get why people speak like that either. We're all in this together, so why do some feel the need to set themselves apart, eh....can't be doing with it.

    Good luck with the posting... your pics are coming out fine here and you're in my Reader, so all is not lost!

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    1. A cafeteria in a mental health center...probably should tread lightly there. :0

      The nurse was just talking to me as he would his patients ...it was just perturbing.

      The painting is 2' x 3'...and thank you for the kind words. I think it's the best one yet.

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  2. Erik - you are creating a whole world here. Love your work.

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    1. Thank you bear...I'm trying.

      'Bout done with it I reckon...itchy to move on but, so far this is my favorite.

      Delete
  3. This is good e.f. It's alive and singing. Though - weirdly - the song sounds Spanish to me... Mind you - that's a sinister bugger in the bottom right hand corner.
    I worked in a mental hospital (yip that's what those institutions were called around here in the 80s and early 90s). It was huge - largest in Europe apparently (which says a lot about the rate of madness in this tiny wee country...) - and old. Victorian. Called Hartwood Mental Asylum and then Hartwood Mental Hospital. I 'specialed' the real crazy folk. Or that's what I was told they were. After 10 summers of 10 weeks at a time I wasn't sure who was craziest. There were good officers. Kindly. Caring. And then there were the seasoned scumbags who had been working too long and out of the sheer convenience of it - and who'd pump the patients full of largactil and melleril and then drink their way through 40 ouncers of bacardi and vodka during their nightshifts. I was too young and immature and scared of them to whistleblow. And anyway so many were doing it I became convinced it was 'normal'.
    I remember reading through case histories like they were novels. And there were the saddest and most damning of stories. Women incarcerated for 'low morals' or having a baby out of wedlock or being the child of the local prostitute or being 'imbeciles'.
    Ah. I think we've come some way from that.
    But maybe not far enough.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Not ignoring you here Muj. I'm stuck at the biggest food show in the cosmos.

      I'll be back.

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  4. It's a little quiet around here. Must be making Nikes again.

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    1. I'm selling gravy and bases today.

      Somebody got a hair in the Alfredo. I just stirred it in...I'm probably going to hell behind that.

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  5. Hi. We've got a great exhibition going on here in The British Midlands at the minute that made me think of you.

    http://www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/article/24433/Exhibitions-at-Nottingham-Castle.

    'Painter, Painter' is a show by husband & wife, Dan Perfect & Fiona Rae. I've loved Rae's work for a long time but Perfect (great name) was new to me. His paintings reminded me a lot of some of the stuff I've seen on your blog. Check out their Vimeo video, http://vimeo.com/92024167 - they both speak intelligently about their attitudes to painting.

    Hopefully, I'll get a post about it written soon.

    Enjoy.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi. We've got a great exhibition going on here in The British Midlands at the minute that made me think of you.

    http://www.nottinghamcity.gov.uk/article/24433/Exhibitions-at-Nottingham-Castle.

    'Painter, Painter' is a show by husband & wife, Dan Perfect & Fiona Rae. I've loved Rae's work for a long time but Perfect (great name) was new to me. His paintings reminded me a lot of some of the stuff I've seen on your blog. Check out their Vimeo video, http://vimeo.com/92024167 - they both speak intelligently about their attitudes to painting.

    Hopefully, I'll get a post about it written soon.

    Enjoy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Man...thanks for that. I like this.

      Thanks for stopping by to.

      Delete