The Grey Side of Life

The End

2012-01-27T16:11:00.000-08:00

Well, yesterday I completed the last page of my sketchbook and sent it in to the Brooklyn Art Library where it will live forevermore (or at least for the forseeable future).
The sketchbooks will be on tour from April 2012:

http://www.arthousecoop.com/projects/sketchbookproject2012

So if you get a chance - go see them!

x

Until next year...

Gretsch Building No. 4

2012-01-13T07:38:00.000-08:00

There is a building, just down the road from me on Broadway called 'Gretsch Building No.4'. I love this building, and everytime I walk past it I wonder who lives there. Are they princes or are they proles? I have heard princes, but I see there is a sign now outside saying they have slashed prices, so maybe soon proles, like me. Perhaps not.

It is just an ordinary building, painted battleship grey, with 'Gretsch Building No. 4' written on the front. But by painting it this colour, it has been rendered truly romantic. Gretsch Building No. 4 is a curious mixture of elegant and formidable, of utilitarian and glamorous. It's blank facade gives nothing away. I never see anyone going in, or going out. No faces at the window, only some occasional lights.

I imagine picking up the phone and dialing the Gretsch. After a long wait someone will pick up; a woman, dressed in 1920s clothing, sparkling with marcasite, one slender hand wrapped around the clunky grey receiver, the other clutching at an an icy G&T. Her husband will of course be dead on the floor in a pool of claret blood.

I reality I'd probably get a graphic designer who owns a couple of french bulldogs.

I'm a Cock when I'm Off the Fags

2012-01-12T13:32:00.000-08:00

Nicolas has stopped smoking. He must because he is having an operation in a week, to remove a tumour from his head.

It is not easy, not smoking. Stopping involves a lot of grey fear, that is, fear about what might happen, fear that takes a nebulous form; grey lungs, slowly turning a sticky black, the indeteminate number of years left before cancer comes knocking. But smoking is also seductively beautiful, it cannot be denied. Soft, smoky lungs and deep ashy voices. The joy of wandering around in fog. The mute grey swirls of lit cigarette.

This page is just a record of the things that Nicolas has said to me over the past few days while he's been 'off the fags'. So far, he hasn't been too much of a cock....

The Return

2012-01-12T13:16:00.000-08:00

I returned to New York after spending Christmas in London. The differences between London and New York are many, but one one the most profound must be the sky. Back home the sky always looks closer, smaller somehow; a soft, layered watercolour in every shade of grey hanging in a neat, rectangular frame. New York skies are altogether more expansive, and dramatic.

At the weekend my boyfriend and I walked through Williamsburg with our tree to be mulched in McCarren Park. Dead Christmas trees lay abandoned by the side of the road and we wondered if we should just do the same. It felt like a summer day, warm and so, so bright -'New York Bright', I'll call it. Our English eyes squinted. Nic's tan had faded after a week at home, up North. I asked him if he wanted to stay in New York another year and he said he would. I also wonder how I will tear myself away from this beautiful, brutal city. From the start I have not known when it will end, our time here and so each day feels like its own little story, an unreal bubble in which I am suspended.

Grey Angel - II

2011-12-18T08:26:00.000-08:00

I am reading a fascninating book called 'The Holographic Universe'. It is a popular science classic, written twenty years ago. It is a mind-bending blend of science fiction and science fact, and although I approach what is within its pages with a wary skepticism, I so desperately want it all to be true.

It may be proved through experiment one day that we are all just flickering, fluxing holograms, waiting to be enfolded back into the infinite. The silver angel and the grey angel that floated far apart through space in life will reunite in death, only to realise, they were never really ever apart at all.

I cannot help thinking that it is only in life we can be the silvery-white angel. After death we return back to the grey. I have always felt this dark, grey space as an absence, or a loss but I am beginning to see it more now as a sort of blending; a blending into something. I am not sure what. I think this idea has been in my heart since I saw an exhibition of photographs by artist Atta Kim (http://www.attakim.com/main.html) at the Rubin Museum of Art in Ny back in March. There was one photo in particular which really captivated me - it was a portrait of New York made from hundreds of photos superimposed onto one another. The result was a completely grey canvas - but the most beautiful, shimmering grey. Colours and lights pulsed and drifted out before floating back down into the fog. Stunning, and quite disturbing. I went home and did a 'Little Bite' about the experience (below).

Last night I read a passage in the Holographic Universe which made me think of Atta Kim. It described a couple, under dual hypnosis, who experience the same reality. At first, after being put into a trance, they describe a 'greyness' out of which, eventually, pop colours and lights of an unearthly beauty.

I am not a Buddhist, or a Christian, I am an atheist. And I dislike the word 'spiritual'. But I can't help thinking that one day we will realise, we were all in fact talking about the same phenomena, just using different metaphors. And what we were talking about, was grey.

Grey Noise

2011-12-07T09:00:00.000-08:00

Noise comes in different colours, I have learned. It can be white, pink, brown, blue, violet or grey. Grey noise gives the listener the perception it is equally loud at all frequencies.

Grey is neither particularly loud, or particularly quiet. It is a great leveller. If grey were a voice it would be calm and authoritative, possibly a bit sombre. It would be hard to get it animated.

Another word for silence is 'black noise'. I find this expression a bit unsettling, as if sound has got lost down a deep cave where no one can hear it scream.

Dead Days

2011-11-18T10:23:00.000-08:00

I wonder how many days I have thrown away, as if they were a piece of rubbish. Am I trying to do this less and less but I still have many of what I call 'dead days'. Dead days take many forms but are most often experienced as a depression ranging from grey to black. In the diary of my life they are the rumpled like bedsheets slept in too long. I like to believe they serve a useful purpose, are necessary recuperation time, but I often fear that I will regret murdering so many days of my youth when I was perfectly able to get out of bed if I just would choose to. I 'daydream' a lot during dead days, twisted versions of the real thing, but sometimes they are illuminating. Human contact is like blood to a vampire in the middle of a dead day. I crave it, and am surprised and gladdened by how little of it it takes to draw me out of the grey. Often it is the only thing that has the power to.

And suddenly I am my old self again.

Grey Brings Out the Death in Pink

2011-10-18T09:11:00.000-07:00

Since I began this exploration of the colour grey, I have been musing over what its opposite is. Every colour has its contrast: red/green, blue/orange, yellow/purple, and I have decided that pink belongs to grey. It gives me great satisfaction to see them together - like a ballerina dancing under a grey cloud. Like all opposites, pink and grey are actually very similar in aspect which is why they are drawn to each other.

I made my definitive decision after visiting the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens on Sunday. There were lots of beautiful places there but the one that moved me most was a silver pond. At least, I thought it was silver until I walked around and saw that the silver was in fact just sunlight reflecting off the thick layer of algae covering its surface. The pond was surrounded by a scattering of hot pink flowers and all in all, with the silver-greys, the pink, the sunlight and the fluff-sprites dancing in the breeze from the rushes it all felt very magical.

Brooklyn Botanical Gardens

On my way home from the gardens I bought some lilies. I don't really like lilies, mainly because of the smell and the fact they kill cats, but I needed them for something. I also wanted white but they didn't have any, so I bought pink. It was fate maybe because this morning I sketched them in my Grey Book. The lilies looked so young, fresh and cheeky in their pinkness it was hard not to love them; but it was impossible to ignore the grey old age that was already bruising their edges.

Xanadu

2011-10-13T10:09:00.000-07:00

I drew this picture of my eye using my eyeshadows and the little sponge brush thing that came with it. It is just a quick sketch. Today my eyes resemble a muddy green pond, which is better than yesterday when they were all red.

Eyes are windows to the soul and even objects have souls because they are made by humans. On a recent trip to Brooklyn Museum (a wonderful place, a treasure trove of delights and much more tranquil than the MET) I came across an object called a 'Soul Container' or Eraminho (with a little hat accent on the o) from Guinea-Bissau which really caught my eye. I love artefacts where the eyes have been inlaid with a different material from the rest making them sparkle with life. Sometimes the effect is so intense you do think the object is actually alive. A favourite of mine is a Sea-Bear mask in the MET. It's eyes trully have the soul of ocean in them, I think you will agree. (I tried to draw the Sea-Bear once but it alluded capture - the devil!).

Soul Container

Sea-Bear Mask

Grey Morning

2011-09-26T15:50:00.000-07:00

Last Friday, my boyfriend had taken the day off work to spend some time with me. We were meant to go out all day but in the morning he was still waiting for the results of a blood test he had had earlier in the week. He has a benign tumour on the nerve that connects his ear to his brain - an acoustic neuroma - which was diagnosed a couple of years ago. It was first discovered when his doctor sent him for an MRI scan after he experienced recurrent bouts of dizziness and lost almost all the hearing in his left ear. His annual scan was due last week but he had had to cancel because they told him bloodwork needed to be done first.

Pre and post diagnosis has been a time of great confusion for him, not only because of the dizziness and not being able to hear properly what people say but also because of bad communication on both parts between himself and the people who are treating him. His imagination sometimes runs wild and he suffers anxiety attacks about his health, where he is convinced he is going to die. I tolerate these bouts of temporary madness, trying as best I can to talk him down from his paranoid perch but often it is best to just leave him alone to cope how he wants to and simply just be around for when he needs me.

Friday morning was one of those occasions. He had called the doctor's office several times that week
to get his results. They receptionist kept telling him the doctor hadn't looked at them yet and to call back later. By Friday he was sure that they were not telling him for some sinister reason, namely that he had terminal cancer or some other serious disease. I took out my sketchbook and did a few secret sketches of him during the course of the morning whilst we both waited for the results.

Apart from remembering how bad I am at life drawing, I decided that grey really is the colour of confusion and miscomprehension. We talk about 'grey areas' a lot. It seems that the whole of life is one, big grey area that we either have to navigate ourselves out of or learn to live in peace within - both of which are hard to do but absolutely necessary. It seems that communication, as always, is key: good communication will get us out of the grey, bad will blur us even further into it. My boyfriend was wearing a pair of old, grey socks and a grey shirt at the time and I couldn't help but think (ridiculously) that if he just put on a different pair of socks in a brighter colour he would focus more clearly on the reality of the matter - that he was not going to die.

Anyway, it was all okay in the end. He hadn't even needed the blood test. The doctor was confused as to why it had been ordered and slightly annoyed that the results had been brought to him for scrutiny. It was unclear when we left the surgery whether the results were good or bad. My boyfriend thought they were bad until we read the sheet properly and realised all was fine. We then spent a very nice afternoon in the Brooklyn Museum.

Do Not Linger Here

2011-09-18T16:12:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET), I found myself in a dark grey room, surrounded by sculptures made from grey stone. At first I found the sculptures beautiful and enjoyed being in there. The sculptures were lit from behind and each cast a mysterious, graceful shadow. However, after I while the atmosphere changed. The absence of colour and light began to drain me and the longer I stayed, the more oppressive the atmosphere became.

I decided that dark grey exerts a lugubrious power over the mind stronger than any other colour, including black. Combined with the texture of stone this power is enhanced. Dark grey stone has the supernatural ability to suck the light and breathe out of a room. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be trapped in a world full of charcoal grey caves and dark stone effigies and wondered what would happen to me. I found the idea both terrifying and exciting. Perhaps, after a while, my soul would adjust. Could there be something vital to be learned in this somber realm of dark-grey stone if we can be brave enough to explore it? I think part of us is always wandering there, even if we are not conscious of the fact.

However, that day I wanted to be happy. Leaving the room was like waking from a dream. I left the museum and went for a walk. I discovered a reservoir in the park next to the museum I had never been to. It was all open spaces and translucent greys, both tranquil and expansive. The city spread like a mountain range around the reservoir, white and glittering in the sun.

That evening, I heard that at sunset something spectacular had happened to the New York skyline. Grey storm clouds had gathered behind the buildings, which caused the setting sunlight to intensify on contact, making the whole city look like it was made of shimmering gold. People had been taking pictures in New Jersey and I wish that I had seen this strange Eldorado, the place where darkness and light had collided.

Down By the River

2011-09-12T09:32:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I went down to the river to a tiny, dirty beach - one of my favourite spots - with the intention of doing some sketching. I have been here before and love it because the views of Manhattan are so good. This place makes feel like you are standing among the debris of a broken world, looking over towards a new world of hope. It is full of ordinary treasures. Pieces of brick wall and concrete slabs provide alternative perches to the slimy rocks further down where you can sit and contemplate the grey side of life (and the not-so-grey).

I did this sketch above which is almost the same as one I did in June (below) of the same place, so I really wan't doing anything new except the other one was from a photo. It was hot, I had a dull headache and felt like I wasn't discovering anything new. I wandered about taking small pencil rubbings from the concrete and wood I found before briefly sketching an outline of a couple sitting nearby.

I was thinking a lot, however, about grey and texture. Grey is achromatic, or if it does have colour it is very subtle. Because of this, texture seems to be enhanced in grey, perhaps because there is no colour to distract the eye. I tried to feel all the textures surrounding me, the gritty, pebbly concrete grey of the rubble and sand, the smooth, metallic grey of the river, the flat, matte grey of the buildings in the distance and the clouds above. I saw a small grey dog with a green ball in its mouth and thought about how much I love grey animals. The grey seems to emphasise the texture and substance of their fur. I thought of a cat with luxurious, thick grey fur and orange eyes. In the end, I concluded that grey without texture can be dull, like my headache which would be some sort of mid-grey and just a bit fuzzy.

The River Beach of Dreams:

The Mystery of the Grey Angel

2011-09-08T13:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was on my way to the shops on my usual route down Kent Avenue past the Williamsburg Bridge. I noticed some of the railings in front had been covered with brightly coloured fabric to spell something out. When I went for a closer look I spotted something swaying in the corner of my eye under the rafters of the bridge. It was a dead pigeon, hanging from a wire by one wing.

I wondered how the pigeon has got there. I assumed it was hung there by the same people that covered the railings and was perhaps some kind of political message or art instalation or both. Williamsburg Bridge is a hotspot for street art. But then maybe I thought it had been hung there by the bridge painters to scare off other pigeons. Perhaps it had just got caught on something and died. I don't know, it is a mystery.

I took some photos intending it to be my 'Little Bite' for the day but as I was painting I realised it would be a perfect start to my Sketchbook. I worked the image above from a photo I took. I prefer to sketch from life but this was all I had. I then decided to use this sketch as the basis for my Little Bite, scanning it and adapting it with Photoshop:

I quite liked the results and decided also to post it as an entry for Illustration Friday: http://illustrationfriday.com/ as the theme was 'mysterious'. Therefore, I killed three birds with one dead pigeon.

Crime Scene: Williamsburg Bridge:

The Grey Side of Life - Sketchbook Project 2012

2011-09-08T12:55:00.000-07:00

http://www.arthousecoop.com/projects/sketchbookproject
I have signed up to the sketchbook project run by the Art House Co-op, who are based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Coincidentally, it is just down the road from where I am living for the year. I was introduced to it by the very talented illustrator Kaylene Alder http://www.kaylenealder.com/home.html who did her own sketchbook last year on the theme 'Help'. When you sign up you chose a topic for your sketchbook which you then receive in the post. The aim is to fill up the sketchbook with whatever you fancy and send it back by the end of the year. It's not very big and only 32 pages, so very do-able. At the end all sketchbooks sent in will go on tour before being permanently archived in the Brooklyn Art Library and digitzed for their website: http://www.arthousecoop.com/library?utm_source=Art+House+Co-op+List&utm_campaign=c1534b2d06-digitizing_annoucement&utm_medium=email

This project appealed to me for a few reasons. Firstly, it is an opportunity to do some focused sketching (always good). Secondly, the project is meant to be an opportunity to relax and try something new and not worry too much about the finished product. Lastly I like the idea of leaving something physical in Williamsburg after I leave at the end of the year. I have been working on an illustrated diary of my time in New York called 'Little Bites of the Big Apple': http://www.flickr.com/photos/sno-flo/. The sketchbook will be something else I can and look back on to remind me of my time here and hopefully be a jumping off point for other projects and illustrations.

The theme I chose was 'The Grey Side of Life'. Grey is one of my favourite colours. It is atmospheric, moody, variable and ambiguous. I associate grey with sublime city landscapes and strange and complicated moods. A lot of my illustrative work is documentary in style and I like to try and find the beautiful in the mundane. For me, grey is both beautiful and ordinary and perhaps why I am drawn to it.

So I begin....