No pictures at the moment, sort them out tomorrow. Just come off first elective, painting, I could spend the next two electives painting using cards bits of stick, anything but a brush, I got a glimpse of possibilities, but alas got to turn my head towards sculpture for the next two weeks, no doubt that will be full of surprises as well. The whole tempo of the place has accelerated into another sphere, theres a great sense of excitement, if we can keep this up for the next three and a half years the sky is the limit, we will never be able to live normal lives again, I love abnormality.

I'm really enjoying the painting, still painting with bits of card except for the weekend project to copy a Lucien Freud painting, quiet a challange and these kind projects take me forever cause I got to take my time hear some sounds, make phone calls, eat, watch movies and all sorts of other things. My construction has lots of meaning for me but it is full of circular shapes and I find them difficult to get right. As usual nothing done in sketch book, will work on it tomorrow please God. Results today, I waited till the early evening before I checked them out, did good, so am happy, just want to get into painting, in with a chance.

I'm always amazed how wonderful it is to paint with a piece of card or a stick, anything other than a brush. The pressure of exectation is removed and whatever happens is a surprise. Our first assainment in painting was to pick 6 to 8 pictures that interested us. I had some colourists, Llyod Martin, Sean Scully and the white of Robert Ryman, also Gerhart Richter, Chaim Soutine, Frank Stella, Klara Liden"s wonderful torn posters and a picture of one of Robert Gobers draign holes. Then we had a morning of mark making with paint. The current project is to make an instillation inspired by an art work. I have picked Duchamps "Urinal" and Rauchenbergs "Monogram".

I created a seperate gmail account for blogging, bad idea. Spent the week working on various things, some worked out and some I'm still trying to make something happen. One piece is a row of 5 tops. Firstly I stuck 2 sheets of A2 together to make a larger sheet and painted it with white emultion. Drew the tops and painted them with gouache. Then I sanded the colour off and recoloured a portion of them with pastels. Stuck another 2 sheets of A2 on to the back cross ways.

Wonderful Christmas in the sunshine in the south of France. Made plenty of notes for work so hopefully get some of these ideas down on paper over the next week. Plenty of reading, mainly reading Panorama, a book on Gerhard Richter, one of the great modern contemporary painters, his methods, techniques, subjects, really inspiring. Also read John Berger's Ways of Seeing, also interesting. Had a look at Roland Barther's Camera Lucida, couldn't get into it, I'll try again, the new biography of Charles Dickens, great to get a chance to read so much.