Bald Sketch

By Paul D Robertson

Blue ballpoint pen

30 x 17.5 cm

Available For Sale.

rant from early 2003

i put it here just

cuz i can

Some swearing here if you have sensitive eyes and mind to such things...

I. Have been very busy as usual. Must beaver away. Hm. Beavers. Wombats maybe. Apparently they sleep for 20 hours a day. More appropriate animal, I suppose, though I do have beaver-like qualities too. No tail though, unfortunately. My industry of late has been focused almost entirely on my web-page, which is actually done now…
And I would post the link, but there are some issues with uploading. Using a friend's uni server, you see. I am tragically poor. Poor. Yes. He has free net space with some bizarre enormous url and it is most generous of him to allow me to share with him. And the page is massive. Huge. I decided to post most of the work I have photo's of… so there is about 140 pages of it. Web pages that is. It is pretty cool. I think.

It was kind of encouraging to be posting all those images - not just to see them all, but I also wrote what had sold, and it turned out to be at least half. That is a LOT of paintings over the 3 or so years that I have been doing it. So that was encouraging I guess, and writing out all the awards and stuff.

As usual I worked too hard and burned out a bit at the end, but that is ok. The least, the very least, of my worries cares and woes.
I have no money at all. I mean that quite literally. I have 60 cents I think, though it could be 65 or even 70 cents. I should prollly pay more attention to the five cent pieces. I had a friend in art school that collected 5 cent pieces. He said he was liberating them from being in currency. Perhaps he was confused about currency and custody. He had a LOT of five cent pieces. He was pretty confused in general.
I get a bit down about money. I work very hard. I mean really really hard. Like too much. And I am pretty good at what I do. I know that I am, rationally I know it in my head, yes. Not my heart, not right now and not for a long time. But in my head, on the surface where the smiles are made.
So I am driven and I am good.
Ok.

I have made $50 in the last 2 months. $1050 in the last 4.

No, more. 5.
Ow.
No wonder I am depressed. Wow. No fucking way. Sounds like a RATIONAL TRIGGER. How totally unlike me. But of course it doesn't really work like that does it? I mean just because a great deal of my sadness is irrational doesn't mean that real horrible things that happen will suddenly make no difference .

Of course the weird thing is that I axually do know why I have not been selling work. My work, in very real terms, has got very much better since I became quite a lot less mad in the last few months. This would, one would think, lead to MORE PEOPLE BUYING IT. But does not because the art world is totally fucking nuts and makes no sense.
What I believe to be the main reason, the reas'on deterre (sp? my French SUCKS though I can say pass the butter) is something I have begun to work out with painful slicing realism.

Last year I sold heaps of paintings. Heaps. About 40 I think. That is a lot of paintings for anyone to sell in a year. Now, the reason I BELIEVE, I surmise and INFER, is that for that time I was painting in public. I was meeting gnu people every day and I was conforming to all of the artistic stereotypes that exist under god if he or she existed.
What that means is that I was pretty mad. Last year I was, you know. I was. I'm tellin' you. I was hyper-anxious and very quick all year. I had a lot of energy and I was pretty sick most of the time. I attempted suicide and I was in hospital for a little while. I hallucinated for about a month and got hooked and came off benzo-diazepines. It was most unpleasant, BUT

Whilst IN THIS STATE
I sold sooooooo much work. When I was in HOSPITAL I sold a PRINT to a fellow PATIENT.

I wasn't doing the hard sell or anything, I was just visible and highly fucking unusual; I was painting in a pub. For three months of last year I wore baubles on my head. They were purple. Mostly
Some of them were blue. I liked the purple better.

Now I don't think this is strictly and entirely necessary to sell paintings. But I do think that it really really helps.
I have sold a lot of work just from people looking at it - even a couple online. It is more about AGITATING for ATTENTION that is the real difference. I was visible. (by the way my washing machine is called "the agitator." My bed is called the "relaxatron 3000."
There are more but I can't remember them right now. My air conditioner control has "for permed or colour treated air" written on it,) Where was I? oh, bitching that's right.

Now.
Right well… what I should be doing now is finding somewhere's gnu where I can paint in public and be charming and unique. Thos would work, right?

BUT I AM DOWN

I have no confidence. I don't believe in myself, that I exist or that I am worthwhile, that my work is good. I have no courage, I cannot convince myself to do it.

I am FRIGHTENED.

Like some failure, some nothing man, some poor pathetic stereotype of a mentally ill person, someone whom I would scrape off my higher self's shoe - a timid scared little mouse that has just seen "nightmare on elm st" for the first time and is lost in a cat haven with no cat nip and no CHEESE tied to a scratching pole with "all cats SUCK" written on a banner tied around his little furry neck.

I have pretty much run out of canvas. I have a small amount of the grant that I received last year left, and all I have to do is make a couple of phone calls and go visit my local art supplier - ripper -offer and organise it. But it is too much for me. I have tried to do it three times so far and as soon as I start I get confused and fuck it up and chicken out. I tried again this afternoon. I would obviate this process and buy it directly but I have no money at all remember?

So. Things are looking bleak and dire and I must EFFECT CHANGE somehow; some-how I need to burn the loaf of moldy bread that seems to be encasing my brain again and find the courage that lurks in my ribs somewhere. Find it and use it.
I am not one given to fear. I am very brave. It takes courage to paint… most don't see how but it is pretty simple really. I wear my heart on my sleeve. When my work fails, I fail. The paintings are not something that I can create without becoming involved in them

Oh… crap.

I just called the people from the wanneroo art award - something I was seriously planning to enter. I got my months mixed up AGAIN
Again I can't fucking believe it again I missed an-otter one for FUCK'S SAKE WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME IT IS NOT THAT COMPLICATED!!!!!!!!!

I did this with the last one. Man!
Curse curse.
Mutter
Godamnit
See what I mean.

How the hell does this work I mean seriously; I really understand Nietzsche I do I swear I am not a stupid man. Oh god what the hell am I doing? I can't THINK.

Not that I would necessarily win but my odds of winning have been 1 in 7 competitions so far and in 1 in 2 I either win or sell, ok fine Paul work out the odds it doesn't help u if u don't enter!
Odds = 0 %
Fuck it all I did it again.
Not that much to organise for god's sake.

Crap

Hm.
Gr.

OK sit here smoke growl and clean my ears with a pencil.
Still cleaning.

Hm. Things are… slow and heavy. Like an oil tanker or a tectonic plate. I can't…. I can't do it, it's all so hard there are no keys, there is no answer I know this it is truth more than any otter information any scroll letter stone.

No more than that, yes, just that. Enough in itself to stop us all cold and ugly in our wet mad bipolar tracks. Ah… betrayal from the inside out. What could be more cruel and real than that?

I don't know if the scars on my wrists, on my arms, my neck, my chest… if they are any even half an indication of the knife in my mind, in my heart. I feel like such a fool. I am so COLD.

Change it and turn it every time it just serves to twist my mind and not to cure it. It is only, yes, it is only a band-aid on a bleeding heart.

Strength can only take us so far, it seems. Skipping school and stones, make it up as we go along.

Ok I gotta go.
Posting
Posty
Post

Love to all
Paul.