Farmer's Market. I am getting ready to visit my mom for two weeks. She is having a vacation nearby, and will pick me up this weekend. I opened and assembled and used my new vacuum cleaner, swept and cleaned the bath and put new sheets on the bed. I like being ready in advance. Tomorrow is laundry and packing.
I spoke to a friend in London yesterday and she was talking about American abstract expressionist Agnes Martin, who also had schizophrenia when she was alive. It's really hard to get a sense of her work online, it just doesn't bear up well in photographs. Anyway, I watched the youtube interview with her curators in London at the Tate, and I was inspired. Martin was, like me, brought up in the Calvinist tradition, but was a Buddhist, a discipline I study too, as church and the Bible are too likely to cause episodes. Although my work was as a film director, I started as a painter and majored in it at university. Because of my episodes over the years, I have lost a nice collection of paintings by other people and also all of my own work. I haven't painted in years, although I went through a period of hand painting letters I wrote to my friends when I was ill. I thought about Agnes Martin and her paintings all day yesterday and decided to order some basic oil paint and varnish. I am glad I did it. I have been watercoloring - just color studies - since yesterday, in anticipation of the arrival of my oils. I will paint small and the object is to just have something to put on the wall again. The walls of this house are full of places I have had to spackle because I was throwing things at the wall because of my voices, which were driving me nuts. So some new paintings would be nice. I ordered a different palette than I normally use and am excited about the colors. My local arts and crafts store is currently offering 50 per cent off canvasses, so I will hopefully be able to buy a few to get started with before I leave this weekend. I have to check my bank account though... Overall I am feeling quite hopeful. I am trying to quit smoking as of this afternoon. I just would like to do that. I recently told my mom that I don't actually have much to live for. But since I have become interested in painting again, and I have a camera again I would actually like to make it to at least eighty. I could stand to be in better shape - lose weight, exercise more. I am feeling better since the Latuda and I guess I have found reason to live. I know that schizophrenics have a shorter life span, but maybe I can make it. I thought about trying to put together a website about my film and other works, just to get a feeler, but it kind of spiraled out into too much stress. I thought I could do the odd, very low key video, but when I started really looking into it I felt really anxious and like I might have an episode. I don't know if this will always be the way it is for me though, so I will continue to do my little projects at my own pace and just see if maybe I can do anything. Since it's freelance, if I ever did get a music video job I would just declare my income to Social Security and they would be able to adjust my deposit accordingly. I get nervous just typing about it now. Well, we'll see.
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