Yessssss!

[WEDNESDAY 25 MAY 2011]
A bit late starting today.  We went to London to see the amazing lo-fi Gospel-DooWop-Garage-Soul Revue show of Chain & The Gang.  Then, as is tradition, we very nearly missed the 1am train - made it after a sprint across Victoria Station (it was like the Louvre scene in Bande A Part, only nowhere near as fun or carefree).  Today I have a severely stiff neck, from looking up at the high stage, and I feel a bit hazy round the edges.  I will have a Berocca and a cup of tea and I will go and paint.


Later, I return to the house and conclude that the Pink Path of Least Resistance is finished.

I allow myself a small, celebratory, Napoleon Dynamite-style "YESSSSS!", as I head back out to the garret.

[details of the rest of the day are sketchy, there is no photographic documentation, there are no notes.  I can surmise from the opening paragraph that I was in some discomfort and possibly dosed up on ibuprofen, and I most likely did some painting.  That was my purpose after all]

a brave idea (that did not work)

[THURSDAY 19 MAY 2011]
The return of the Thursday Painter.  Sitting here faffing on the internet.  He's thinking about what painting to tackle first, but mostly he's struggling to get out there and filling time with internet crap...

Journal Entry:
This morning I worked on some watercolour sketches.  I don't do these very often and I'm not happy so far with the results.  One of them is a draft for a competition, think I might need to have a few goes before I'm happy enough to submit it.

I didn't get much else done before lunch, but had a spurt of activity at 2.30pm, taking the old "rock face" in hand, I concluded it was time I got it finished.  I added a bit of glow leaking out over the edges of the fault-line. And now the canvas resides temporarily in the house ready to have holes picked at my leisure.

At this point I had a brave idea, I've been mulling it over for a few days. But the time had come to seize the moment (I still had a practice run on a crappy old small canvas to check).  My plan: to paint over the big square Unitation d'Habité painting with some yellow-y white, then scrape it all off with a plank of wood.

It didn't work.  I cursed myself.  I took to it with a rag and a bottle of white spirit, scrubbing hard to remove as much paint as I could.  Still no joy.

I resorted to more white spirit, leaning the canvas at an angle and applying to the building.  I used up a whole bottle of white spirit and soaked the rug in the stuff..

So now I've removed as much of the fuck-up as I can and I'm still not any happier with the painting than when I came in this morning.  At least the "rock-face" looks better...

article about 'Notes To Self...' in OnOffice magazine

There is an article on my post-it notes piece Notes To Self: Stolen Time, March 2000-August 2006 in the May 2011 issue of OnOffice magazine.  You can read it online: go to www.onofficemagazine.com and click on the MAY 11 thumbnail to view.

press for Work/Work exhibiton + Notes To Self

Here are a couple of press-clippings about the Work/Work exhibition, and my artwork Notes To Self: Stolen Time, March 2000-August 2006.

There was a preview about the exhibition in the 3-9 March issue of Le Cool London.

I also found a mention of Notes To Self at helpgov.wordpress.com in their 101 uses for a post-it note section:

"No. 3 – Filling those long empty hours at work

It was only searching ideas for 101 uses… that I became aware there’s a whole sub-culture of Post-it art.

Some of it wouldn’t fit at all into 101 uses…. Lots of cars covered in the things, models (human variety) ditto, a portrait of Jimi Hendrix made out of Post-it notes. And so on.

But suddenly one of the Twitterati alerted me to Work/Work – a group research exhibition investigating how artists balance their creative work with paid jobs. The exhibition ran from 3 – 11 March 2011 at the Lo & Behold Gallery in London.

Dominic Bradnum’s Notes To Self was prominent in the exhibition

an archival artwork made up of approximately 1,966 individual post-it note “artworks” created over a 6 year period, whilst in full-time employment

Now that’s interesting – 1,966 notes drawn while in full-time employment over six years. By my reckoning of the normal number of working days a year that must be an average of more than one a day.

Were they drawn in work time? With the employers’ precious stationery supplies? It would be indiscreet to ask but a photo on the Work/Work web site suggests some at least were produced between 9 and 5. I especially like some of his raw material for the bigger work. Note the Post-it reading “AAAAAAAH! ANNUAL REVIEW”. Never did three words tell a story more effectively. Seems like he wasn’t looking forward to his annual appraisal. We can all sympathise with that one."

Trust the artist. He knows...

[WEDNESDAY 11 MAY 2011]
My first task was the final part of stage 2 on 'Ne Travaillez Jamais'.  Perhaps the casual eye cannot see the subtle difference since the last photo...  You must trust the artist.  He knows...

Happy with my progress, I skipped down to the workshop to finish those record boxes.  They look quite nice a sturdy, but I know that the only thing holding them together is glue + nails + hope.

I had time just before lunch to work on that troublesome little patch of the original 'rock face'.  Much better.

Apres lunch, and not much time as I have to leave here by 4pm.  I take on 'Home Sweet Home', a canvas that has been werked on, on and off, since April 2009.  Recently I changed the font style, and wiped out a good few months' werk.  Today I concentrated on the area where green and orange neon meet around the heart (not pictured), I also added some sporadic orange glow around the letters.

The Imposter

[THURSDAY 05 MAY 2011]
The Thursday Painter returns again. Some say he is an imposter, a doppelgänger, an evil twin: Hell bent on undoing all the good work of his flip-side. He brings out the worst: the procrastination, the doubts, the lack of confidence...

Hang on a minute, those are all negative traits displayed here nearly every Wednesday.

It is 10.51am. I have still not started painting. I'm sitting here tip-tapping away on the computer, spouting nonsense that no-one will read.

So I went outside, but instead of heading to the studio I went down to the workshop and bashed together some bits of wood, which I hope will one day resemble a pair of record boxes to store part of my seven-inch collection.

Eventually I found myself in the garret, where I took on the second part of stage 2 on the words 'Ne Travaillez'. There was not time to werk on 'Jamais'.