A day in the life

When I wake up I usually gage how my day will go around the pain, unfortunately, or at least how my day will start. I honestly thought after three years of surgeries and endless procedures I’d be able to relive the life I lead, but fate has a different plan clearly… trust and acceptance is the next step and I just have to accept that. A massive silver lining has come out of it all though or a lesson if you will; l am one determined mother fucker. I am a fighter and I don’t give up very easily. I am going to take over the world with my art and I am going to find a sort of contentment or happiness if you will, while listening to my body at some stage along the way.

Generally, a day will start with a walk or my rehab which is every second day (or total torture as I like to call it and believe me I like a challenge but man is it gruelling). After that much needed necessary first cup of coffee, I head out to my studio where I will either prepare a canvas by setting it on fire to ground it etc, or I will attack an already prepared painting. If I have a show coming up or if I generally have paintings running around in my head telling me how they wish to manifest themselves, or if I dream of one I try to hold onto it for as long as I can before my daily memory lose kicks in (lyrica, it’s the drug of total memory loss and distraction kids, or a ‘dirty drug’ which I found out on Friday, don’t take em’ it unless your desperate the withdrawals are even better!! I have another 350ml to go before I am off it, if ever). Painting also generally come to me at night when I am at my tiredest and want to sleep but can’t as my mind is bustling a million miles an hour! Anyway, once I am painting away I generally go into the painting where I am, gingerly making unpredictably markings which completely distracts me from the reality of the pain that’s exploring my hips, back and pelvis. I used to go at it for hours upon hours, I would get lost in the painting I was working on, bring me into its world and suddenly it would be 4pm and I haven’t eaten all day, they were days of expressive magic. Now a day’s I am lucky if I get 3-4 hours out of a day. However!!! Once I am finished a piece the satisfaction is huge, the accomplishment I feel is immense. As my work has become a bit more abstract than I am used to which (I am finally embracing) a huge part of my emotion at every moment during the process of that particular painting is staring at me in my face, I am in that painting and to see it manifest is something which I call a ‘magic moment’. It frequently happens either when I am staring at it wishing for inspiration to come before realizing its done, or I can be adding the last bit of paint and then boom, there she is, and it’s then worth everything, every minute of pain, of the journey I go through with that painting on that given day. Today I vomited pain onto a canvas