Thank you very much for the brushes,1 every little helps but i m afraid they are too weak as i snapped three of them doing this evenings study and the brush came apart from a fourth.
We took our first summer landscape this evening, a size 20 view from the fake lake2 at vestakullar looking back towards the house. We stood upon a road of mown, a highway of cut grass on the otherwise un-farmed meadow, perhaps it was a practice run for a fledgling Bonde3 who knows, but this corridor of freshly cut grass provided some interest and is the main thrust of our composition. For Van Gogh and Gauguin a woman in black symbolised solitude but that is not why I have included one today.
The idea in this work, and our summer meadow campaign overall is to put into practice the lesson of letter 333 on the subject of broken colour and the avoidance of tone local so as to get to a better understanding of autonomous colour.4 It is all too easy to wail it on, the colour that is, with conscious disregard for accuracy but it never holds water, at least for me, and the secrets in letter ??? just may help us to grow a more organic approach to colour. Besides it is these thoughts which we glean through his correspondence, that led the man himself to the discoveries he made, so why not us? If we fall short again and again so be it the only question to ask is are we making progress? Are we learning? Well to this we can say only that it feels very much like we are especially since we developed our wretched state which by the way is a position we articulated in our video series5 regards a state where all is lost from commercial and career perspectives and all that remains is the base, wretched impulse to create.
It seems that the statues are indeed the way to front up the alt far right attack on the left in the ongoing George Floyd situation, and furthermore it seems that presenting the election as trump vs the protesters is their way also, the democrat candidate seems not to be mentioned so much. So far so predictable if I may be so bold but we do have another twist which is part of their play and that is the announcement by Kanye West6 to run for president. An innocent piece Borg7 teasing or something more? The latter. I can imagine someone like Farage sitting across from Trump campaign strategists having been brought in to consult: "what you need is someone to break up the black vote which is sure to be greater this time, a proxy of some sort...I did something similar with the Brexit party to confuse and disrupt everything and that worked a treat." Yes indeed, I will eat a plate of bitcoins if this fool West hasn't been brought in by Trump, and if he is aware of the game afoot and he goes through with it then we are talking Shakespearean betrayal. Having said that he's a billionaire now and he has to break into the syndicate of guilt8 somehow and as we all know black people have to work twice as hard to achieve, anyway what of this question of how to thwart the alt right trump? It is a difficult quandary between doing what is right and makes sense - organising, protesting, all sorts of activism and doing what is more pragmatic and more likely to be effective like taking the temperature down and removing oxygen from the white supremacists. The obvious danger is that the former actually fuels the fire of the other side. Indeed it is the tribal structure of politics that is so essential to the alt right populists where they absolutely rely on a strong enemy to fight, without it they have very little, and again we see how it is being presented as trump vs the far left protesters, the perfect foe that can be moulded and twisted any which way all the time. We see popular racist remarks thrown around to the simultaneous delight of his supporters and the outrage of the rest of society which feeds back into more support as the outrage is twisted. The problem is that even if one wanted to strategise against this there is no way to control protest as if it were part of the democratic party and that is what makes 'the protesters' such a good foe. The alt right win by prodding and poking at society, at the cathedral and need not worry much about the actual political opponent. We ought to keep our eyes and mind out of all this really and focus on the summer meadows but it is our DS commitment and besides that darn election is casting a looming shadow that is growing into our mind. You know it feels like something very bad is going to happen.
The study has some broken colour but it became a fudge rather than the crisp decisive statement we see in his June Whitfield's,9 particulaly his size 20 from 88 in Amsterdam, but there was some progress made in the breaking of the blue grey sky with pink tones to better relate the ground and the the lone figure, besides much of our difficulties stem from lack of regular painting. Only when we have had a period of total focus on painting for say six months can we properly judge our work, progress and potential but seeing as we have not even managed three days in a row we must face the facts and continue to make the best of it.
John
P:S
There appears to be an Englishman by the name of Miller in the vicinity who I believe was the person whom I could see while I worked this evening -his energetic and boisterous hula hooping in my direction, beer can in hand, would certainly suggest an Englishman.
1 We sourced some brushes from a contact at the dollar store.
2 An area of water at the rear of John's house that was artificially created by a former Vestakullar resident.
3 John has used the Swedish word bonde meaning farmer.
4 Colour used in painting according to the logic required or desired by the artist rather than determined by the natural appearance of things.
5 See Vimeo, The Wretched Painter.
6 Popular black musician and television object.
7 Derrogotory slang term to describe social media, AI algorithms and perhaps the internet in general.
8 Desribes the process by which acceptance into a group is gained due to the performing of some dispicable act. First used by JG Ballard. Mentioned by John in
9 Typing or predictive error, should read June Wheatfield. June Whitfield is an English actress.