Loads of freelance work to grip the body and mind, mostly props and painting and some carnival work. The props are Stymphalian Birds, for a show in Chester about the labours of Hercules. They got that right, I made 8 of them.

 I especially enjoyed doing the paintings. What is it about easels and frames and galleries that throttles the pleasure of painting ?  There’s something playful but purposeful about painting for the theatre. It’s so rewarding because working towards a performance has to be more collaborative, less ego driven. The work ends up less polite and prissy than working for a gallery show.

 Strangely all this activity left room for my heart and guts to think at their own pace. Guts and heart are good at asking the why questions, the questions you tell yourself you haven’t the time to ask. To be honest I’ve felt dissatisfied with business as usual since I came back from Skye and Orkney. As my dear friend Bill Brody said :

“I’m tired of doing art that I’m supposed to be doing”. 

He heads for the backwoods whenever he needs to think. He’s just back from a two week canoe trip in Beaver Creek Alaska. He’s very good at using the rigour of proper travelling because he has the practical stuff sorted, and keeps working whatever happens. The first thing he does is absorb himself into the silence. This allows the questions to appear at their own pace, and then it’s just a matter of waiting for an answer. It’s been the opposite of the backwoods for me - I’ve been in the studio without a break for nearly two months - crowded, sweaty, dusty and anxious. I love all of it. I particularly love working on things people actually want.

 Somehow the pressure of other peoples projects and deadlines means that the deeper bits of me carry on at their own pace without distracting themselves with making ‘Art’.

Art. I really dislike that word. Here we all are, queueing up for the last dance of the hominids. How can making eyeball pleasers be a priority ? How can desperately trying to get some airtime from the chatterati be a sensible job ? The trouble is, I never really got myself to believe that ‘artist’ was a proper job, even though I really wanted to be one. When I was younger (small kids and big mortgage) people who said they were artists either had rich parents or were blokes who talked all the time, drank most if the time and saw their kids intermittently. Or they lied about it and were really teachers. Never felt I belonged there, however much I was drawn to the work.

So I’m liking this theatrical painting. Make the stuff I care about, work fast (it’s later than you think), stick it in front of an audience and don’t blink first. Don’t need to perform, just need to mean it. So now I’m working for a local festival, a bunch of pre Christmas shows (Brighton art fair and Old Fire Engine House gallery in Ely and Open Studios in October).

I’m going to push the colour lithographs, do some more scenic painting and mostly I’m going to follow the stuff that excites me.

Sunday hiking with Bill in Quirang NE Skye. Coast all churned and sliced, the track slipping away from a scarp that overhangs the sound of Sound of Raasay. Glimpsing Rona and Wester Ross on the mainland through the weather. Not much drawing but lots of looking and “Oy vey ! will you look at that”. Reassuring to see what a strong impression this place I love is making on Bill, who is used to 40 mile long glaciers and 20,000′ high mountains. There is something happening here, even thought we don’t quite know what it is yet.

Monday, proper hiking and painting with Bill and Susi along the S edge of Loch Brittle. Working on the cut edge of a waterfall, all roar and rumble with more fluidity than fixed things to look at. Similar feeling to a freight train roaring past when you are standing three feet away on the platform. Susi made a beautiful mark study of the big sweep in front of us and then, being a jeweller, went in for a close up study of a sedge clump. This was the first time I saw Bill working out in the open. He was perched on the edge of the biggest drop, pinging up and down and working on a horizontal panorama in rapid brush marks. He somehow has the capacity to claim the whole picture, whereas I chewed away at segments and had a lovely time working the charcoal into the paint and vice-versa.

Tuesday we visited Elgol, SE Skye, on the recommendation of my mate John Dyvig. Elgol is at the end of the road at 135517, overlooking Loch Scavaig. A wild SE severe gale with spindrift flashing over the breakwater, Soay Island looming in and out of the grey wall of cloud and spray. We could barely speak in the open but now have a plan to get a boat into Loch Coruisk as soon as the weather calms down.

Wednesday Last day with Shug and Susi, wisely spent visiting the Tallisker distillery.  Now all packed up and ready to set off tomorrow from on Elgol for up to a week camping around Loch Coruisk We are sailing on Misty Isle with Seumas macKinnon.

Thursday I’ve only just got time to post this before in an hour’s time, and will be off the grid for around a week, will post proper pictures of the place and the work when I get back.Here’s some really links I’ve picked up along this really wonderful journey :I was pointed at an interesting blog of artists who work with water, called Watermarks :We got a really friendly reception from Ian Chard in Broadford Books and Gallery. When Bill went in to buy a piece of plastic to repair his broken pallette.Got a lovely mail from Nigel and Kathy, a couple of kayakers I met in in Orkney. Working the tides and dodging the winds in that magical island.

Looks like Bill Brody has started something with his blog about foveal vision.It’s really got me thinking because it’s counter-intuitive.  Most of what we call looking actually takes place after we have looked.  

The brain joins together all of those quick glances, those foveal spot-scans into a composite idea of what is there. Forget rectangular frames and bits of paper -  our field of view is broadly circular. Forget trying to make a drawing from a single look or photograph. Also, because foveal sounds like a soya based meat substitute I’m going to call foveal looking spot vision and peripheral looking edge vision.

The edge is much more interesting than the spot. 

I dropped this whole confusing thing into a studio session at Colchester yesterday and the students came up with some really interesting work ! Teaching is truly amazing when you see ideas get up on their own legs because they’ve been invited in by a group of students. I asked them to do a life drawing where they only look with the edge of their eyes. The model moved across their field of view but their spot vision stayed in the same place. The drawings were wonderful. I only realised how difficult it was when I tried to do one of my own - I noted two spots on an easel a metre and a half from the model and marked them on the paper, then kept my spot vision only on them to both look and draw. It’s virtually impossible ! I had to keep wrestling my spot vision away from the model and even more difficult away from the drawing of the model when I looked at the paper. Also it was impossible to respect the rectangle of paper or board, which is why I started drawing on the floor. 

It’s quite good for teachers to be occasionally subjected to their own daft ideas.