THE ARTIST IN RESIDENCE

yo!.. true story... innit!


I always wanted to write a book..

about myself of course..

but it would appear that..

autobiography..

is for the famous, luvvies, politix, celebritwats..

an such like..

but..


HERE IN PALOOKAVILLE


we don't really give a fuck..


so..

when I was fourteen..

I was not an artist..

not anything really..

just another one of life's confused..

and art was an option..

for gce 'o' level.. as it was then..

we studied plant drawing..

and composition..

double lesson of drawing a plant of flower on wednesdays..

and the same amount of time on thursdays..

imagining and creating paintings..


ONE YEAR LATER


a lot can happen in a year..

especially when you become fifteen..

I surprised myself.

and fell in love..

with art.


we also had a shit hot english teacher..

called mr. payne..

and he made me want to write..

he wrote a play..

and I acted in it..

at the Cristmas play thingy..

I had arrived..

everybody knew this was nowhere..

but I soldiered on.


uh ho..

incoming!


MARKET NEWS


tim knight- slope of hope..

I think “brown shoots” are starting to become visible,
and the prospect of a resumption of the downturn is coming into view.
I’m certainly positioned that way.
As I’ve said, I’m not aggressively positioned, but at 150%,..
I’m definitely not cowering in the corner, either.


The sides couldn’t be more plain..

On one side are facts, data, science, reality, and historical precedent..
 
On the other side is political horseshit, lies, bromides, feckless aphorisms, and careless bon mots..
 
I suspect you can guess where I reside..
 
and you can further guess which side I hope prevails in the end.


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NOW WHERE WERE WE?


so at the age of fifteen..

I was walking around town..

with a sketch pad..

and a ronson comet cigarette lighter..

that I used to light other people's

fags with..

started making out with girls..

by the time I was sixteen..

I was a popular face..

about the town and the clubs..

I got laid..

I saw the ronettes, gino washington, bob and earle, ike and tina turner..

canned heat, the who, pink floyd, jimi hendricks..

after leaving school..

I started painting in oils..

I saw the incredible string band, taste, nice,

I had a day job..

in an office..

in the lace market..

it inspired me to get out..

and go to f.e. college..

get some a levels..

and go to art school..

at the age of seventeen..

I grew my hair long..

got laid a lot more..

and entered my painting..

self portrait with blue jacket..

in the john moores..

painting prize exhibition..


news bulletin follows..

Donald Trump Shoots 100,000 People on Fifth Avenue

And his people don't care.

That the administration was caught flat-footed by this pandemic is not its real sin.

Most countries flailed early on.

The only large country to do well right out of the starting gate was South Korea..

but that was because they flubbed their response to a previous outbreak of MERS and learned the lessons from it.

Yet we now have about a half dozen examples of COVID-19 success stories..

countries that have contained the virus and limited its spread..

making it possible for them to avoid both massive death tolls and draconian..

open-ended economic shutdowns.

There’s South Korea, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Iceland, Germany..

and a few others, depending on how you count.

These results are not surprising.

The standard practice for controlling infectious diseases is well established:

massive testing to support a system of contract tracing.

This allows a country to identify and isolate those who are infectious,..

making it possible for everybody else to go back to relatively normal lives.

Consider the big recent coronavirus news out of South Korea:

13 new cases identified when a 29-year-old man noticed symptoms and tested positive after an evening going to nightclubs.

There are three things to note about this story.

First, people were going out to nightclubs, which had recently been reopened.

They may be shut down again for a while after this,

but schools and baseball leagues are opening up.

South Korea was never shut down as tightly at the US and will soon be much more open.

Second, there is enough testing to spot a potential “super-spreader” right away.

Third, South Korea has a system of contact tracing so thorough—

visitors to nightclubs, for example, are required to give their names as they enter—

that everyone who was potentially exposed will soon be located and tested as well.

MEANWHILE BACK IN THE 1960'S


I wore my blue jacket..

on the visit..

to the john moores exhibion number 7..

won jointly by richard hamilton and mary martin..

I had not won the first prize as I had confidently expected..

I had not even made the cut..

but I did meet dawn..

I did see eye opening art..

I did read nausea on the train when I..

delivered my painting for consideration..

over the two visits..

I saw peter getting out of nick's pool..

a great allen jones..

a great holman hunt..

I was studying a level art at college..

I was reading coleridge, auden, macniece,

I was getting laid regularly..

what's not to like?


coming up


sex, drugs, rock and roll..

painting, photography, film,

one plus one, if, blow up..

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