18 June 2025

They will feel better in the hills. Let them die in the hills. Linda is looking sheepish. Kate and Dave have warpaint around their eyes. They look determined.

19 June 2025

There was a sand cloud hitting a dune going towards the shore. An amorphous mass, a cloud, dark, hitting a sunlit sand dune on the shore, with the clear blue sky behind. Immense moving amorphous mass, swirling, with a multitude of particles. It seemed to move slowly because of its immensity.

I partially obliterated the painting with a glaze of mocha mousse, and then with vertical pattern. And then started painting the image again as if from scratch. The result is something the same but more embodied in paint. Subtly the previous layer informs the latter.

The wall has developed a leathery texture. Like skin. I only got as far as putting the second red layer down. So I will wait and see what happens. The previous vertical pattern layer is now dancing with the second one. A palimpsest is being created. Linda’s hair has joined the vertical pattern for a dance. Her hair hangs like dreadlocks now, with skulls and faces.

24 June 2025

Nod and smile and flourish your arm like an acrobat performing in a circus, like Pavarotti singing O Sole Mio.

Kate and Linda are the left and right brain hemispheres, respectively. Perhaps they are the West and East hemispheres of the globe too.

Dave is me? And Israel?

Trying to find the pattern—the narrative—that fits with this image. What is the story this painting is trying to tell? What emotion? What particular emotion?

How can I read the emotion? Where can I get the information—the eleven million bits per second of data? And how does my mind present it to my consciousness? And then how do I translate that into words and abstract ideas?

Do I just write furiously all the thoughts that come into my mind? Do I wait for my subconscious to process the data and present it to me in the form of an emotion? I suppose I could try both.

Why did I choose this challenging, nondescript image?

I conceptualise the three persons consciously, and the way they have been painted into existence—embodied in paint—subconsciously affects how I perceive them.

Nothing much seems to be happening here. No one is being murdered or raped. Nothing extreme or action-packed. No taboos or boundaries are being crossed.

The internal is trying to manifest externally.

How do I read what is going on inside them? All the effort that went into their mere existence. Trying to become more sensitive to the reality they exist in.

Why are they interacting with each other, these three individuals? Would they not be happier alone? Is all the shot worth the drop of joy?

What is all this white light, and why is it surrounding Dave? Is this just my ego trying to pump myself up? Or is this your anointing?

When I look at Dave surrounded by the white light, I feel a sense of wellbeing, joy, sublimity, beauty, warmth—womb-like comfort.

His facial expression, concerned, creates a tension with this. Bathed in light as he navigates his way through life.