Diary Entries
Posted by Robert Beer on 7/29/2010 11:02:45 PM
Celtic Renaissance (enhanced detail)
Thursday 23rd May 1996
Today I get a rejection from the Friedlander Sunday Times watercolour competition.
Again I feel a greater freedom.
I have been rejected in my work. It is time to actually not just say but to implement the words - 'The secret of success is the ability to withstand failure'.
My rejected watercolours are being returned from the Royal Academy.
The video made in my house and showing all of my major paintings has been rejected by the Eisteddfod again. I have no work out. I have now been put in a state of grace.
When I submit work to others there is always an element of compromise. It is as if I have to make myself smaller and simplify my message for them to perceive it. People pleasing must end forever. Instead I will work very, very hard. Total commitment with no other thoughts. I will focus. I will find if I can still 'cut the mustard', I must find out one way or the other.
Sunday 24th November 1996
I am trying to 'de-focus' my being so I don't feel any more pain. I can't take any more; there is no point. I know what it is like and I seek fresh landscapes of the soul.
O God please let me use this. Is it my chance to sublimate and achieve greatness of communication in art?
I seem so very pathetic. No energy. No balls. No nothing. Yet pride is still sitting in judgement of this ineptitude.
I feel very alone, but I would not wish for anything else.
I must stop worrying about what happens to my art and possessions after I die. I will have little control really, so I might just as well do as much as I can while I still have life in my body.
If it is crap, it will not be for want of trying to do my best.
It hurts. I can't breath. I can't be. It is pain. Give me harmony, relaxation. Let me paint beauty. Autumn colour.
I am alone, so alone - abalone. My mother is Love.
Love and pain explode into white light.
I try to paint on a large canvas. Feel ill. Just about to pass out, but go on.
Imagery of inner form with outer reality intensifies.
Perhaps this is my 'teaching' situation.
Teach thyself. Live and work. Innovate.
I feel so weak. I am in distress. Quality of life very poor.
I am sad. I like to be optimistic. At present I have such little 'Life Force'.
Death stalks me, with 'flowers of death' becoming permanent fixtures on both hands.
Friday 7th February 1997
"Paranoia" - I see the beautiful twigs on the beech trees at the bottom of next door's garden. Suddenly it is as if they have taken on the animosity of people who don't like me. I am sensitive about all those forces, which my spirit seems to conjure up to oppose me. The ultimate fear would be for the whole of nature to gang up against me.
I have reached new depths of illness and despair. There is so much more to do with my art. I am desperate to finish my work before I die, but I am too ill to do anything without dramatic medical help or a miracle.
I wonder what would have happened if Art had been my sole life and not marriage, children and Blackie! Perhaps I would be famous and not the broken forgotten being that feebly writes this.
Today I get a rejection from the Friedlander Sunday Times watercolour competition.
Again I feel a greater freedom.
I have been rejected in my work. It is time to actually not just say but to implement the words - 'The secret of success is the ability to withstand failure'.
My rejected watercolours are being returned from the Royal Academy.
The video made in my house and showing all of my major paintings has been rejected by the Eisteddfod again. I have no work out. I have now been put in a state of grace.
When I submit work to others there is always an element of compromise. It is as if I have to make myself smaller and simplify my message for them to perceive it. People pleasing must end forever. Instead I will work very, very hard. Total commitment with no other thoughts. I will focus. I will find if I can still 'cut the mustard', I must find out one way or the other.
Sunday 24th November 1996
I am trying to 'de-focus' my being so I don't feel any more pain. I can't take any more; there is no point. I know what it is like and I seek fresh landscapes of the soul.
O God please let me use this. Is it my chance to sublimate and achieve greatness of communication in art?
I seem so very pathetic. No energy. No balls. No nothing. Yet pride is still sitting in judgement of this ineptitude.
I feel very alone, but I would not wish for anything else.
I must stop worrying about what happens to my art and possessions after I die. I will have little control really, so I might just as well do as much as I can while I still have life in my body.
If it is crap, it will not be for want of trying to do my best.
It hurts. I can't breath. I can't be. It is pain. Give me harmony, relaxation. Let me paint beauty. Autumn colour.
I am alone, so alone - abalone. My mother is Love.
Love and pain explode into white light.
I try to paint on a large canvas. Feel ill. Just about to pass out, but go on.
Imagery of inner form with outer reality intensifies.
Perhaps this is my 'teaching' situation.
Teach thyself. Live and work. Innovate.
I feel so weak. I am in distress. Quality of life very poor.
I am sad. I like to be optimistic. At present I have such little 'Life Force'.
Death stalks me, with 'flowers of death' becoming permanent fixtures on both hands.
Friday 7th February 1997
"Paranoia" - I see the beautiful twigs on the beech trees at the bottom of next door's garden. Suddenly it is as if they have taken on the animosity of people who don't like me. I am sensitive about all those forces, which my spirit seems to conjure up to oppose me. The ultimate fear would be for the whole of nature to gang up against me.
I have reached new depths of illness and despair. There is so much more to do with my art. I am desperate to finish my work before I die, but I am too ill to do anything without dramatic medical help or a miracle.
I wonder what would have happened if Art had been my sole life and not marriage, children and Blackie! Perhaps I would be famous and not the broken forgotten being that feebly writes this.
