Simon has recently returned from a two-week holiday in the States, mostly spent snowboarding at Lake Tahoe. I did not accompany him because a) snowboarding NO NO NO and b) house to myself for two weeks OH YES PLEASE THANK YOU VERY MUCH. Here is a list of things I’ve done in his absence:
1) Survived for nearly a week solely on ramen noodles, frozen pizza, processed cheese slices and SMASH! (If loving Smash is wrong, I don’t wanna be right. I especially love the name – as in: “Wot’s that then?” “S’mash, innit?”) Apparently when left on my own I revert to a collegiate diet.
2) Created an unholy mess, just because I could. We’re talking dinner plates left on the floor near the sofa, a trail of dirty clothes leading from bathroom to bedroom, the whole shmessy shebang. There’s something comforting about wallowing in your own filth, isn’t there?
3) Got bored of unholy mess and cleaned the living fuck out of the house. I did a full Clean Sweep on my studio: pulled everything out of every drawer, spread it all out on the floor, then sorted, labelled, filed, rearranged, recycled, reframed and repurposed to my little heart’s content. I even went so far as to cover shoe boxes in decorative paper to make prettier storage for my shelves. Like Martha Stewart on Methedrine, I was. I went at it for a solid eight hours at least.
4) Developed a painful crick in my neck due to manic eight-hour cleaning frenzy.
5) Made some new paintings! Since Adobe came along and blew my mind, I’ve worked pretty much exclusively in digital. Painting is just way too slow, TOO SLOW! and not editable enough. When I do paint, it’s mostly just to make passably look-at-able things to fill gaps on the walls. But last week I got an itchy paintbrush finger, so I hauled all my paints and jars and brushes and canvases down to the lounge and sat in front of the telly til the wee hours painting painting painting and now I have THREE new pieces to hang up. I’d forgotten how much fun it is to pick bits of gesso out of my hair.
6) Watched procedural dramas non-stop until my eyes bled.
The list of things I did NOT do during Simon’s absence includes working, blogging (natch), and running around the house in my pants like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, which I totally wanted to do but was stopped by a lack of hardwood flooring and Y-fronts.
Here’s a new collage sheet. I’m really excited about this one – ever since the lovely and talented Emily turned me on to Loteria cards, I’ve been trying to think of a way to incorporate them into my artwork. This is the first in a series of collage sheets based on the classic Don Clemente set of cards – I’ve taken the traditional images and made them into original collages using genuine vintage illustrations. See my Etsy shop for details…




















