NO ESCAPE

I like the Dante...

I can't manage to post a video clip. We may have to get together for this... 

I wanted to put up the one of the sign outside the studio, in that beautiful and slightly home-made typeface, which says:

TO ROOF ONLY NO ESCAPE

Which I've always found so strangely touching, and which links in so well to all the lost paths. Like the lost path of being a full time artists because I am being an almost full time mother.

But that's cheating really because when I wasn't a mother I wan't exactly putting in the full days at the studio, and I sure as hell wasn't winning the Turner Prize. And anyhow, the work I've done since the children, though SLOWER, is so much better than the things I was making before that my chances at the prize, though pretty small, are probably bigger, apart, of course, from the fact that I'm getting too OLD...

Not that I actually care about prizes. I mean, I CARE, of course, but I don't really care. I care more about making work that I like. I care about getting that out somehow.  I really care that James and the kids are all right. 

I do care about whether I'm an artist or not, and thinking about that as I struggle to publish the books and deal with the lost negative issue.  Am I an artist if I keep making things and the things are good but they don't get widely seen outside of my own circle? Christopher Isherwood defines  an artist as (and I don't have the book here so I'm paraphrasing, I'll post the accurate quotation soon) someone with a disinterested desire to entertain. Now, I think I have that- I'm interested is success and audience but their consistent refusal to arrive don't stop me making more things. But then again, Isherwood could have been wrong.

Isherwood in interesting here, on this project, for two reasons. The first is his decision to make his undisguised contemplation of his own life the basis of his art. The second would be his disinterest, bordering on contempt, for children and family life.

So you're right. If we say this is art, then it is.

Maybe it's ART like this:

                  DO                            ES_I                   T_MATTE

                  R_                             I        F                          _

                S    O                          M      E                          O

                N    E                          _ THI                            N

              KS _ IT'                        S    _                             A

              R          T                      _      I                             F

            _               I                     T        _                         W

            O              R                    K          S                       ?

Or maybe not.

I agree with you about the fonts. Lets keep it how it is for the moment.

I LIKE this, even if it isn't art.