FINALLY! After days of waiting it’s finally arrived. My official bottle of Trump Medical Injectable Bleach! You know it’s good when it features one of my favourite quotes from the big man himself “I’m not a doctor but i’m like a person that has good ‘you know what” We know you do big fella. Trust us, we know.
In just the days it’s taken to move from unsubstantiated claim into production they’ve even managed to cram in ‘added heat and light’ and we all know that can only be a good thing when combatting viruses. It even works in under a New York minute. Now that’s speedy. Where’s my hypodermic? If you want to use it after just let me know…
Here I have paraphrased Jean-Paul Satre because in his play Huis Clos, or No Exit, he doesn’t actually mean people are the absolute worst when one of the characters says “L’enfer, c’est les autres” but in this case that is exactly what I mean.
There I was going on my first excursion outside in about 5 days due to the fact that I have underlying conditions. The sun was out, the breeze whipping through my wispy geography teacher style hair (cheers lockdown!) when I noticed the first idiot coming for me.
It was a middle aged woman who for some unknown reason crossed the road and walked straight towards me. Not 2 metres in front or behind me but exactly to my location. Luckily for the lady, I didn’t have The Answerer with me, a hefty blackthorn staff blessed by the gods who just loves being used to beat the stupid out of people especially when they don’t adhere to scientific recommendations. Think Thor’s hammers Mjolnir or Stormbreaker but instead of the unworthy not being able to pick up the weapon, the unworthy get a knock upside their head in the hopes it might shake loose some intelligence….
It is A2 in size and made using pencil, watercolour, acrylic and spray paint
So we’ve got the final part of our triptych up today. Like the other parts it’s detailing someone dealing with lockdown. Rachel here is in a different boat to the others however.
Rachel has a nice house, big garden, investment banker husband and has always been a high achiever. She’s been attempting to treat the lockdown like an opportunity and was doing magnificently for the first two weeks. She’s been acing home schooling and has even been teaching little Sebastian some basic Mandarin on the side but the cracks are beginning to show. She thought she heard Sebastian swear and almost burst into tears. She’s now eyeing the bottle of gin in the drawing room. It’s not even 11am.
So there you go. We all deal with lockdown differently. Just try not to be the guy in the second picture and we should all be fine.
Well good morning there! If you tuned in yesterday you’ll know we had the first part of a triptych featuring a lady escaping reality using the power of music.
Today we have the second part – ‘We ride at dawn’ – featuring someone else trying to escape the reality of the coronavirus. Rather than music however this gentleman has donned his historical war outifit, picked up his AR15 and then gone to protest (against a virus!) on the streets alongside hundreds of other like minded citizens. They are convinced it’s all ‘fake news’ and seem to be on the verge of taking the law into their own hands. Their motto is clear…
We’ve got to get through this somehow. I’m just not sure armed insurgency is really the way forward.
I haven’t just been sat on the sofa enjoying the fruits of various streaming apps. I have also found time to go for a daily walk and have also been doing a little creating. I’ve done a thematically similar triptych of sorts and today we’ve got the first part ‘Turn up the speaker’.
This lady has been alternating between really enjoying lockdown and wanting to go out and socialise. She’s found the best thing to do when she’s in the latter mood is to sit with her head in front of the speaker and keep turning it up until she hits that sweet spot when she can believe she’s clubbing once again. She imagines she’s a basshead with hair like poetry floating on the music or somesuch. The neighbour then inevitably bangs on the wall at that point but by then the music has done its job and she’s good to go.
I may well give it a go this afternoon with Afrojack’s ‘Turn up the speakers’ and see how I get on. Watch this space…
Things have been getting a little weird since lockdown. The intense boredom and general anxiety mix together in some odd combinations. In order to combat this I thought a self-portrait may be in order. I was wrong.
Looking at the paper in front of me I saw myself staring back or at least some facsimile of me – but things just weren’t quite right. The head too elongated, the nose too small but the dead, lifeless eyes I seemed to have got just right.
Then I realised it wasn’t really me but that unflinching dolt High Risk Hugo. A stain on society if ever I saw one. A man who on his good days was more like Chuck Norris on flakka trying to chat up your girlfriend but on his bad days the social equivalent of someone slipping a dead slug in your mouth and holding it shut.
I’ll not be doing another selfie anytime soon. We don’t need to let that particular cat out of the bag…
You’ll be glad to know I prevailed in the mexican standoff with Patrick here. His phone rang. I signalled with my eyes that it would be cool to take the call. He wandered off to take said call and I struck. Hitting the wall with what I imagined to be the cover of Patrick’s newest imaginary Afrofunk single. Straight from the mean streets of Mombasa and fresh from his new collaboration album with Seun Kuti and Staff Benda Bilili. You’ll also be glad to hear it’s shooting up the imaginary Afrofunk charts as I write. Life can be sweet, even in these dark times…
‘No, it’s more like fucking groundhog day!’ I hear you scream from behind your screens and I have to admit that’s a sentiment that I hold myself but sometimes those massive grey clouds clear from across your minds-eye and you start to see things with a new perspective.
With this picture, the clouds only parted long enough for me to finish it before those ……… thoughts started to creep back in So much so that I was poised with a spray can hovering across this piece ready to deface it because I no longer felt the sentiment it suggested. It’s all swings and roundabouts I suppose…
Whilst Patrick here has been really most helpful in getting him to this stage he resolutely refuses to communicate anything about his preferences for a background so we’re currently engaging in the artistic version of a mexican standoff. Who will prevail?
Well, it turns out that we’ve reached something of an impasse with Patrick here. It’s been a rocky road to get this far and now the way forward is unsure. I had even less skin tone colours than last time but am quite pleased with the eventual outcome – especially the nose. The problem is background. And there is currently no resolution in sight.
It would seem the muse has slipped off to provide inspiration to some other struggling artist. The best I can currently come up with is something Tiger King related but that just feels like I’m jumping on the bandwagon. We’ll just have to see if that’s the best I can do. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of the second series of ‘Painting in my garden’…
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