Bright Moon Studio

[WARNING: This blog post contains fucking swear words.]

OK. So I’m not strictly in isolation, that is to say, I live with my mother, my son and his dad. So we all have each other’s company at the moment which is cool because we’ve already spent years honing the working from home thing. We don’t even miss school because my son has never been! He’s unschooled and home educated.

Well, this is certainly going to be an education for those used to going out all the time. That used to be me but after my birth experience that went slightly awry and I ended up in the hospital, I became exhausted, eventually diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue. I spent years dragging myself through the torment of being isolated due to having no energy to do much but the basics. Still, I created art.

Art has been my saviour many times. Through my twenties, I had paranoid schizophrenia and anxiety and depression. A heavy mix of conditions (a shaman would say I lost my soul) but it set me on the path I am now on. Working from home as a self-employed artist. It was that or yoga! Had to be art.

That’s no easy thing, even with all the abundance of technological and social resources. I took to blogging early on when I discovered WordPress, and I’m still here! It was the selling bit that flummoxed me and I couldn’t or wouldn’t think of my art in any commercial way, let alone as a ‘product’. Yuk! And yet I produced more art. It’s addictive!

I had a few home exhibitions until one year nothing sold. Fair enough really. I was working really large with crazy colour pallettes including neon UV paint! That’s not going to go with anyone’s decor! Still, I didn’t really care. I just wanted to make the art that I wanted to make, exactly when I wanted to make it. I made more wild and crazy art that no one understood or wanted. I didn’t care. I made art anyway.

Today, I am attempting to resolve my deep schism which looks a bit like me against the world. My paranoia has had a work out recently, big time, and with that, I was determined to kill this fear virus once and for all. Funny how outer reality comes to mirror one’s internal life isn’t it? Now everyone’s paranoid, and I am no longer alone! I’m still making art, at my own pace.

The weird thing is, for the first time in my life, I feel that I’ve landed on my feet for a change. With jobs, tasks and ideas as well as stuff, clutter and paintings building up all over the house, I could find any number of reasons to walk away from the business/organizational aspects of my practice. I could hide in meditation or yoga, or music again! Still, at least I’m making art!

Now, it seems I have no choice but to get down to work and heal the rift between myself and the world. In short, I don’t trust it. I don’t trust people and I’m still afraid, but at least now I’m not alone. People all about me are now seeing the shitty horror of our collective predicament in the form of just about every catastrophic circumstance imaginable bar AI taking over the planet! Is this armageddon? I think so! Time to make more fucking art!

But what is armageddon for? Is it for waking up? Can we just all now wake up? I don’t want to dream alone anymore. Can we all please just stand up and decide to make the changes we need to make to keep ourselves and the planet alive? And still, make art?

Fuck Yes.

Now, my memories of dangerous and disturbing dreams seem prescient. But who would have believed me if I had gone on about it? Perhaps there is a role for me to play in this after all, because I feel like I’ve been awake and hiding, for too long. It’s time to come out of the closet and shut the door behind us.

I’m not going back in! Fuck that!

I know I’ve got some shit to say. I love words, but without a reader, what’s the point, beyond therapy? I think I’m done with therapy. Things are too close to the edge to hold back now. Perhaps I can still make art, but make sure that it’s actually saying something, and if I can’t say it with paint then words will have to suffice. Fuck it. I still need to make art!

Words and pictures tell the stories of our lives. Now, more than ever we are being asked to share, to nurture one another in our isolation. The funny thing is, that when you stop seeing it as isolating, you can turn isolation into solitude. You get so open with the universe that it’s a joy just to have the peace inside to hear the music of the spheres and the chatting of the birds, if you’re lucky! That’s the flip side of all this. Sooner or later you will arrive at a more peaceful space, and when you get there, I will be waiting and making lots more fucking art while I’m at it.

Peace and Love 😉

x

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