Bow Aim - Girls Head - Anthem

Picked up a drawing that hadn’t sold/wasn’t necessary. A tender, obscured portrait. Gave it to R. An afterthought in the right sense – of a serendipity that fits. The way R. gripped the painting as if she wasn’t going to let it go.

101230 Bow Aim - Girls Head - Anthem

R.D came over to the studio to discuss publishing the rehab drawings in Artichoke. It a magazine he produces from his shed. No production values, printed on a budget. Its a magazine covering art that falls outside of the dull monotony of the overexposed and underachieved thing that passes for most Cornish art. But amazing in itself. A real breath of fresh air. We had a good time going through everything, showing him layer after layer of painting.

I think he left with an idea to go with an article about the big painting stuff I’m doing at the moment. I might have to work on him a bit to get a spread of the rehab drawings in there. I think he’ll feel they would need a context, some text to define them, or at least an outline of the conditions that they were done under. But they probably don’t. .

And the rehab drawings. One done a day on whatever a4 bit of paper there was to hand. They are the precious secret. There is something compelling about them as a document. Each one drawn in some deathly therapy session. They have the spirit of the J. Cocteau’s about them. I knew about that diary he kept for his own detoxification from opium and cocaine. It was always their hovering at the back of my mind. I actually saw a copy of it at Camden market the weekend before I went away. And I was broke, or didn’t want the expense when there was only 3 days left of oblivion on offer.