Here some photos of the objet trouvé and my blue bag and I with my painting in the garden (click to enlarge):

Then something happened.

I was lying on my bed with a slightly sore toe. I stood up in the night and stepped on the dog Angelo and the angel thought I was the devil or  an intruder or murderer so bit my left big toe and wouldn't let lose !!
I screamed out and Clemens got up out of a deep sleep and separated teeth from toe. Poor Angelo was over me like  a loving dog but my toe was leaking badly.

Anyway, I was thinking: Goodness, we live in a lucky country indeed.  And very very tolerant.
 
We have a woman Prime-Minister, I voted for her, living in sin with a man. And we have a greens senator for Tasmania who is openly gay and a big eared Liberal leader without a clue. Like a sweet jumping chimpanzee.
 
A Chinese minister for Finance who, also, is openly a lesbian.
Every two weeks I get $840 for just breathing and if I had a problem with breathing an ambulance would be at the front door before I could exhale !!

Again: shadows but more.....
These shadows wouldn't leave me yet.
I started to hang up a sheet on a string in the garden and create scenes.
Arrange the setting and than photograph them. If not Clemens as figure myself so I took the Clemens photos and he made the Paul ones.

Then with Clemens huge computer knowledge, I have zero !, we changed the colours and sometime the shapes.

So have a look. It is a booklet made by us both. The first time. I also made of these pictures and text a booklet. Below.

If you want a hardcopy you'll have to let me know (click) as I haven't got enough funds to post them to all you loyalists.
 
phb

Just started working on my 5th booklet called 'Paul Bakker and Mistakes'.

It will be made public soon.

Sitting outside the other week I saw a beautiful shadow on the inside wall of the gazebo we have in the garden.

It was of Clemens talking to son Casper. I took a photo and then Clemens took a photo of my shadow.      

Shadows left: Clemens and Casper. Right: Paul and little finger.

I made these little figures only a few days ago. Finished, more or less, the male a few hours ago.

Father, mother and child. The child was found in the park during our daily walks with the two Godlike dogs. Or Doglike Gods.

The wooden figures I also find on my walks and with minor adjustments with sandpaper and a sharp knife they become what they are.Also Godly figures like Angelo and Vinci, the animals. The man is a runner or a tango dancer, the woman stands alone thinking and the baby is just a little plastic doll. Not sure if she has a soul. Of course she has as I chose her to put on a pedestal..

I photographed them outside. Taking them from my incredibly messy room.That's what Clemens always says. He's right of course.

I need help, I need a housekeeper !!!

We, Clemens as I did, were always brought up with servants. In  Indonesia we had baboes and one jongos, a male.with a head band. In Iran we had only house boys. The nicest one was Wah-hap, in his fiftieths and an Arab. Not the loved race by the Iranians. who felt terribly superior.They still do. Ask Gomeini or Kohmeini.

But when I lived in Terena, Portugal, I had a woman to look after my house and myself. Lived there off and on for nearly 20 years.

Yesterday we got back from the south of Queensland.
We had done a runner from Cairns, Far Northern Queensland, as the Government advised ALL to flee..
The cyclone Yasi had been approaching.
So, as good and frightened citizens we hopped in the car and made a dash for the south.
Yasi decided to follow us. We went through a pretty beach place called Cardwell, abandoned for sure, windows taped up etc but it was quiet and peaceful. Our two dogs, loves of our life, traveling with us needed a break. Angelo, named after Michael Angelo, and Vinci, named after Da Vinci.
Cardwell was a very pretty place and we stood on the beachfront with a row of palmtrees.
We left and ten hours later it was devasteated. Same with Tully, further down..In Cardwell the beautiful row of palmtrees along the coast where we stood with the dogs were all gone.
We saw that devastation on our way back. Then came Tully, near Townsville.
We left and it was also hit in a mighty way. So sad.
We found ourselves at Mark's, Clemens eldest son and my godson. (Clemens is my friend from when we were 7 years old in Indonesia and later Iran and Holland. Then Australia !!!)

Photo caption left: From canvas to coffee table book - ready for the cut. Right: The coffee table books.

Looking around my studio I see again and again a number of large paintings against the wall, all 120x120 cm.

All without a purpose in life. A little shameful really. I had given them so much attention at the time and now they are like an abandoned child or a school kid with his face against the wall.

It isn't the first time I write about our daily walks with the dogs through our most beautiful tropical park. The colours, the greens and the reds and mad bright blue berries blown all over the cement footpath and with the daily rains or not and the graffiti on the path, very enlightening about the kids, I imagine these slabs to be huge big paintings only fit for the top galleries in London and New York. So that bit of the walk I call the 'Madison Avenue Strip'. So terribly sophisticated. Further on we have the 'Queen Elizabeth walk', I called it so because I wish I could wake up there . And have my morning coffee. Elizabeth, just for comfort, my era.

~~ # ~~

But not only the beautiful colours attract my attention but also the little branches fallen from the trees the cut up pieces of wood that look to me so human. As long as I can remember I have always seen trees as people diving into Mother Earth. Often I can even see the sex of the diving person. Or tree. Sometimes pregnant.

Now I am actually making little figures out of these findings and they are so cute. So lovely to work with.

I never knew that a piece of wood has five different skins, I leave the piece in the sun for a day, hanging with other bits with all the same huge karmic change: they will become an object to please humans.

Little bits of wood all dressed up with new black paint smothering their nudity.

But writing about this slightly abstract subject is futile because I can show you a few photo's.

Photo caption: Bodies fallen from trees. More bodies in the Sculpture Gallery

I have also thought I don't want to paint any more. Next I'll be 65 years old, surely 20 more than I had ever thought.

Painting a picture, from your mind or from life, is always for someone, some body, to see. To look at. One needs that other person to legitimise the visual.

I am sure nobody is waiting to see the next painting, the painting to be made for the entire world to see.

No, I don't think so.

So what to do with the paintings I have?

I will cut them up into small pieces and make booklets out of them.

The last time I had this problem with too many paintings and me wanting to move on was in the Azores, on the island of Santa Maria. I lived on this island for a year in 1973, I had so many paintings that I decided to burn them in the orchard at the back of the house.

I still believe I caused the first chemical pollution on the island as it smoked to terribly.

Now I walk around and see huge trees and I see the beautiful bodies they have and I know I CANNOT chop them up for my statues. But they are getting bigger. My statues, but also my desire to make a life-size figure....

Today I started on two pieces of wood, 60 cm high, and they will be a couple.

I'll tell you more later.

~~ # ~~

Photo credit: 'La tumba de Tut Ankh Amon' by obokaman_com. Source: flickr.com

At the moment we hear allot about King Tut Ank-Amon- the Egyptian golden mummy. Apparently he died of Malaria, had a bad back, cleft pallet and maybe a club foot.

But he was of the highest blood, his father and mother shared the same blood pool. You must imagine they truly believed they were everything and all around them was nothing. What a way to get up in the morning.

I believe they knew that if the match worked it was great, in their sense Great, God-like Great, if not, it died or was helped to die by the priests. Generations were being manipulated like that for sure. No short cuts.

But what these Egyptians leave us is beyond belief. I, as Clemens does also, believe these creatures, this culture came from somewhere else.

I visited the Pyramids of Giza on my way back to Europe, now quiet a few years ago. I stood in the King's burial chamber with that huge and empty stone coffin. In silence. Suddenly I could hear another tourist in the ante-chamber freaking out. Vomiting and peeing. Probably shitting himself too. Poor man, but we left the chamber and I walked forward down the tunnel, foot for foot. When I reached the exit and saw all the sun I was blinded for about 20 minutes. Thank you Pharaoh Tut.

But I do fantasise that I was a painter of colours during their illustrious time. Ta Tut....

And now I am happy on a journey where wood, branches and sensual shapes are on my mind.

And getting bigger?

phb

I have been running around in circles for some time.

When I am stuck or frustrated by a painting I simply put down the brushes and pick op the needle and make a figure, or this time, a lump of pink slabs of maybe flesh.

Cut of old sheets then stuffed with fibre.. Life size and will hang it in the tree with the other 'second' class citizens.

They are my 'bad conscience' I think: The fear that I might be sacked as a recipient of 'Orders' from Above. OUT of under the God's bed. Out of the company of all other artists, eunuchs, slaves and hermaphrodites who sleep under God's bed. Of course I don't believe this but it gives shape, colour and substance to the idea I wrote about before, for Heaven's sake !!!

It sounds a little like a fairy tale or something worse, something from the Grimm brothers.

I have wanted to do this portrait of C., the guy I know from when I was just five or six. Living in scary Java, where nobody seemed to like us. Then Iran, where nobody seemed to like us either. After Iran on to Holland, where they noticed we were not wearing clogs. Now in sunny Queensland where I still feel often the white man. Or the pink man.

Anyway, I asked C. if he could give me some time to pose for me in the back garden. Sunny and stark naked.

I started to plop him on the canvas. A few rough outlines and 'full stops', the navel, the nose, the eyes, the nipples, his knees and the penis.

But I knew it immediately: the spirits were mucking with my head. I didn't know at the time they were turning my head around.