It’s been pretty non-stop, as it always is, because I can’t stop or won’t stop (I felt like Young Gunz when I said that). A life as an artist who’s working full time (In a techy day job) and has a family is busy, as you can imagine, or not, you might be living this life as well. I’m not complaining, I do moan about the rat race and I’ve started Project Rattloch and my weekly art practice (Which are the same thing) and many other things on this Substack before, that started off a series and kind of petered out.
I say this time, it may change, but I wanted to record my thoughts, upload it, raw, unedited on my Substack and then transcribe that as the post with my tweaks, just tidying it up a bit.
A secret project
So what’s been going on this week, I’ve launched a secret project which isn’t really secret. I don’t know why I’m not talking about it, but I don’t feel ready to share it yet and I think that’s fine. It’s beautiful the way art works and when you’re working on projects it takes different turns and something that you wouldn’t have expected like a month ago happens [effortlessly].
So it’s only been two, three weeks I’ve been working on this little side project and it’s not taking up much time at all and I wanted to test out a lot of ways of working and stuff and it’s been featured in a publication with, I can’t remember if it’s 30,000 subscribers or 300,000, but anyway I got a lot of attention through that and it’s not in my name, it’s in a pen name as well. I’m talking around it, but I do want to tell you what it is, and it’s not like it’s totally secret like doing a Banksy where no one knows who he is, it’s more I want to establish this first as a separate thing and then it’s just going to be linked as an art project from my usual work. But it involves selling art prints, using print on demand services and a certain way of drawing which is quite freeing and it’s really exciting, and you’ll know more about it soon don’t worry. So that’s been set up really quickly and unexpectedly from doing some lunchtime doodles so that’s been cool.
Getting back into fitness (AKA Witness The Fitness)
And I’ve been getting back into fitness as well and I know it’s not art related, but I wanted to update on that because I’ve always struggled with my weight and it’s been up and down and I’ve had a love-hate relationship with overeating and food, etc. and love-hate relationship with the gym, going for a bit and then thinking ‘what am I doing I don’t like the gym’ and then stopping. But I got into a good routine where I was going every morning, getting up at like half five, going for an hour, then doing the morning routine with family and then going to work, and it was working really well.
And then I got a bloody ear infection (not literally), and I think I probably got it from the gym or something, but the old me would give up after this setback, but I’m kind of raring to go back to the gym which is mad and it’s not happened before so I think something shifted.
I’m realising that although this gym stuff and health and fitness is not literally art related, it is [part of my wellbeing], because it’s the foundation of my health and the fitter I am the more I’m going to be able to paint and have stamina for painting and painting larger pictures and having more energy outside of my day job to do more. So I just wanted to say that really, that’s been pretty cool and I can’t wait to go back to the gym.
Studio updates with BRUT
And also BRUT has been cool with slowly ticking things off. We’re getting new stuff for the studio, got some plants in there, setting up some other events. I mentioned in one of my other posts we got the Salon of the Rejected coming up, I need to set a date for that, and we’ve got a mark making workshop, and then we have some 3D printing stuff as well from that 3D printer that we got given which was amazing.
Applying for a grant
And oh yeah I applied for a grant. So I posted in my last post about grants available because I was looking for grants myself, and I’ll share a post on the grants I was looking at. So I applied for the Unlimited one which is a sculpture project, and it would be easy for me to say I’ve never done sculpture before and not apply, but I just bit the bullet and did it.
So I’m looking at doing a memento mori piece based on my Time The Great Equaliser piece, but made into a 3D structure in the form of a sculpture and be placed in a sculpture park in Norwich which is in... I was going to say Middle East, it’s in East... an area called East Anglia. Not angular, is it angular? Is it angular? Angular... oh I feel like Jade Goody now because I remember she couldn’t pronounce East Anglia [in an interview back in the day]. What is it? It’s not Angular, that’s it for god’s sake, East Anglia. And I’ve got a link to that area as a kid because we used to go on holiday at Great Yarmouth every year so I thought I’d apply for that and see what happens.
First the funding to create the sculpture, get a fabricator to help you with that, and then have it in the sculpture park for a couple of years and then you can move it where you want to, so it’s got to be like bolted down. So I wanted it to come back to Swindon after that, and I encourage anyone to just go for something that’s out of your comfort zone. What’s the worst that can happen? The best that can happen is you get the grant funding and then you work out as you go, the worst is you don’t get it anyway. So yeah, go for those grants.
Painting at the studio
I did a little bit of painting at the studio recently. It’s really nice because we’ve had some funding for equipment for the studio, we’ve got benches, racks for the paintings, more easels, and we’ve got these trestle things. It’s funny isn’t it, you’re used to a way of working, but putting a big canvas on a trestle is a really nice way to paint rather than having it upright. Normally when I was painting bigger canvases they’d be on an easel upright, but painting on top of it you’ve got the whole view of the thing looking down and it’s quite nice to do that.
So I mixed some oils. I haven’t used oils for a while, but I put an oil base ages ago, a nice deep blue on a canvas, and then I’ve painted some figures in pink. I used Stuart Semple’s Pinkest Pink mixed with linseed oil and some white and red oil paints and shook it up, and it’s got a really nice texture to it. So that has been amazing, getting back to it, and even though I didn’t do it for very long, just getting in there and painting [It’s the main thing].
25 six foot canvases
And then there’s another project going on which I can’t say much about either. I don’t know what to say about it actually, other than it involves 25 six foot canvases and that’s all I’ll say about that. You can do digging if you want, I don’t know if you’ll find anything, but that is exciting and I think that’s about it for the week.
Substack schedule and Drei Fragen
So my plan is to do these every Wednesday, publish them on a Wednesday, and then it’s a nice mid-week post I think, and we have like the previous week’s updates.
And I was going to do Drei Fragen, the three questions for artists, but I haven’t stuck to that. I did bring it back, but then I stopped it again. So if anyone’s listening to this or reading this, please be my guest and come on Drei Fragen and answer the three questions, you’re absolutely welcome. But I haven’t got a regular schedule for that, but if it unfolds naturally and people send me their questions I’ll be happy to post them maybe, or fix those on a Monday or something.
But for now weekly posts are going to be on Wednesdays, my weekly art practice updates, also known as Project Rattloch.
So that’s me for now, over and out,
SLART.