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.

The painting shown here I did in 1975. It is of a man wrapped up in bandages and next to him the covered body of a child. Scary stuff? Absolutely; but not really.

The small body was in fact my daughter Renate who I asked to lie on the floor with a sheet over her so I had a 'model'. Renate wasn't afraid at all as she knew how it had started. The life sized bodies I made out of clay she quiet happily sat on while talking to me. She knew it all started with lumps of clay. Lumps of clay that end up looking like dead bodies in the eye of the beholder.

I did these things as I thought I was so afraid of so many things I'd make the creepiest of all things and as the maker, I couldn't scare myself. I would be without fear. I was even scared living on my own in the 'big' city of The Hague. I had just arrived back from one year on Santa Maria, Azores, were nothing could harm one.

If I have to describe myself psychologically, I'd say I am a man with angsts. Fears. I am afraid of heights, sharp objects, cats, dogs, teenagers and dentists, to name a few.

I am afraid of rejection and I always thought I was dumb. As a young person I had totally accepted the idea I was mentally retarded. I couldn't read very well and hardly spoke the languages I was meant to understand. I remember asking my mother: 'Mum, do I speak English good?'.

by David Leigh, POL magazine, published by Gareth Powell, 1975

Paul Bakker's sculptures arouse unwilling curiosities, stir religious antagonisms and demand forthright reactions. Which is quite understandable as they rather resemble a row of tightly swathed and tied corpses awaiting transportation to some mass grave-yard.

They lie in their square, shallow coffins, fixed in attitudes of either violent or peaceful death. Their stilled faces still contain a trace of remembered life, their limbs contorted in the death spasm.

The other day I was awoken, at 8 am, with a nice cup of hot sweet milky coffee (Nescafe) and a lovely smile. The Smile said: Gosh, you are so lucky to be without too many responsibilities.

The Smile gets up at 6 am. To let Angelo have a pee.

I thought about that and tried to find my Responsibilities.

Not under my bed, I looked.

What and where are they?

I don't have to worry about getting kids to school, the rent is paid automatically out of my automatically deposited pension and the garbage is taken away once a week, also automatically. Normal and recyclable garbage.

When I was living in Portugal, in the eighties, on a farm in the Alentejo we had no running water, no electricity, no bathroom, no telephone or television. I had a battery powered world radio receiver, that's all.

Kerosene lamps whose chimneys had to be cleaned every day before lighting. And a dog to feed.

An 800 meter walk to the boundary fence where once a week a taxi would be waiting to take me to Elvas, a border town with Spain. For shopping.

So there my responsibilities were obvious.

Last week I visited Melbourne. My nephew Jeremy Bakker was showing his work done for the finals of his Master of Arts at RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology).

Strange as it may sound and some people at the exposition hearing me might have thought me rude/stupid and insensitive, was, that I didn't understand his work. But it more than intrigued me.

He had a small bottle filled with all the 'fullstops' cutout from a Stephen Hawking, d.o.b 8/Jan/1942 book.

In the middle of the room stood a pillar and around it and crawling up the pillar were hundreds of his own thumb-prints in wax. Every morning he'd dip his thumb in a bowl of wax and keep the imprint. Or is that an out-print?

I shocked a young couple when I asked them if they could eat one. Why did I ask that? Because it was so terribly personal and edible.

Another work looked like a very 'normal' modern work of art. As I commented in my blog some time ago (I do so hope Jeremy understands I am coming from a corner of admiration)( I am sure he does) and where it has been reproduced.

It stopped raining yesterday and I finished the canvas called Motherhood.

Don't know what to say about the picture.

But I do like it very much.

It is a final painting of its kind I think.

I used my little symbols, the pussycat, the crosses and the yellow flower.

The teddy bear is waiting to be found.

In my script I wrote a few things only relevant to the time and mood I was in.

It is life size. The grey hand is an outline of my own hand and thus 1:1.

But what will the next step be?

phb

Last year I painted something to hang on the wall during the passing of the year. No mystical or spiritual meaning added whatsoever. I painted it just to look at.

What is so wonderful about a painting is it's nothing more than a piece of stretched canvas and it can invite you to such a wondrous world. It offers all or nothing or like it or not. Worse, you are not interested.

So the painting was a party piece?

Yes. No.

No, I started to travel into the lines and patches of colour and saw all the irritations. Where help is needed.

Getting rid of these little buggers starts you talking to the Image and a certain game of respect develops and 'Í am the Boss' here. I suppose I am.

If you just read on you will understand who is the Boss between Painter and the Painted. Me, the Boss, the Brushes, God the Holy Father or maybe a knife.

When we thought to have a few friends over for the passing of the year I had just finished my last painting.

An empty space was for all to see and for all to feel. My place, that space.

However I did want to cover the yellow wall in our living space so thought of painting something that looks happy and doesn't make sense.

If somebody wants to know what I am making I can say I have no idea as long as it is happy.

Be Happy, Keep Smiling. Just for now.

Yesterday is history and tomorrow is a mystery.

Is it a plane?

Is it a rocket?

No, It's Superman.

Whatever you see is yours.

When the painting is over

What do you think a painter does when he finishes his painting?

Does he take three steps back, drop his head to one side and putting his pipe in his mouth, a small smile can be detected while He looks at His Creation...

After nine months of struggling He looks at His Baby.

Sound lovely but I know it is very different.

I suffer and maybe, not sure, enjoy Post Natal Depression after finishing a painting.

Always.

Post Natal Depression

This is what I want to write about as most people think I am being funny. Or disrespectful. Or a misogynist , Heaven forbid.

But let me go back to the beginning.