Prescience

By Paul D Robertson. Pastels, 85 x 55cms. Sold

Here is an example of an artist's need to have a thick skin. A drunk woman told me this piece was bad, so i left it in my car until it was destroyed and did not finish it.

Now I like it. Oops.

Hence the title. I didn't show any.

the pub where i normally paint and where i have my studio has been bought and is closing. A few weeks ago when i found this out and my car blew up and i got some HORRIFYING BILLS i got so stressed out that i took like three whole days off. the bills and the car totalled 2 grand. Since then i have made more than that from selling work. whew.
The work that i have been selling lately i have undersold by a lot. i know that i have, but i haven't had much confidence and have been very frightened of not making enough money to keep working (i spend hundreds every month on materials and framing).

It is heartbreakig to do.

Spring is a very good time for artists - there are triple the number of competitions or something and uh one of my girlfriends has taken over being secretary type person and is really good at it. So i should get to enter them and win some (normally win about one in five or something . It depends a LOT on who is judging. As an example - in the pastels section of a recent very small perth based competition i entered the clockwork crow piece and lost to one entitled "cottage garden." See??
Had some other big wins lately that are complex and i won't go into, but i am starting to get some more recognition and a bit of a profile (though i do have a pointy nose).

I am in a mixed state. I swing every day. It has been accelerating, but i have given up on prognostication cuz it keeps not really working and the goat's entrails are really HARD to interpret.

I crashed for no apparent reason and had chronic anxiety and very dark emotions and desires. threw up from anxiety again. I got better, was hypomanic all the next day.
I am finding it very hard to resist self harm. I do not understand it at all - where it comes from why we do it why we should even fucking think about doing it. Or why, now, when external factors are mostly reinforcing and impossible to disbelieve in rationality, i should even think about it all.
I wrote a lot about this when i was in the process, just before i went into hospital last time.

I still have this foreboding, this DREAD. ("And i will show you something different form either. Your shadow striding behind you at morning. Your shadow striding toward you at evening. I will show you fear in a handfull of dust. Um, T.S. eliot.) it is omnipresent and stultifying. I trick my mind with hope, like i always have. But it is hard so hard crippling sometimes alone and sleepless. Quick. Call another girl Paul.
I haven't been posting much, probably why this one is so long. i have had a lot of pressure on the back of my head and behind my eyes. i gotta work all the time.

I am badly hooked on clonazepam (like valium only stronger). i have tried to come off it , cold turkey, tapering it off, and i go straight into dysphoria either way. Really nasty, classic u all know what i mean bang your head gainst the wall till it really fucking hurts and shake and pace and hate everyone and everything, mostly yourself. I hate it, i do not enjoy what it does to me; it is not like an addiction that gives me some sort of high.
Been reading up on benzines. though they may be a necessary evil, they do a lot of damage and i have to say in summary that that they SUCK.

I bought some new boots. they r cool and a source of great happiness.

That's where iam at. med compliant and all. They have never really done ENOUGH; just take the edge from the knives huh?