Scumbler: the book

I've been reading this book about a guy living in Paris and painting, and renting property.  He has three kids and a wife.  William Wharton, who is an  odd author, well it seems to me, very 1970's...you know hugely overbearing, almost violently energetic...The funny thing is, he seems like crazy Alan Bates in that movie, what is it called...hmm, well Alan Bates is a painter in love with a girl etc....

...And the thing is, both this author and Alan Bates seem to have to go crazy when they are painting...like they get all this crazy energy and boom it comes out in the painting...and it is all sort of weird, sweaty, athletic, physical...there's this feeling like it's a giant communal something...I don't really get it.
...well of course in a movie you get it, it's another wacko movie device to drag the lame plot along and get to the ending...but in the book it seems sort of sad, like maybe he's not really a painter, but someone who wishes he liked to paint...or maybe likes to see himself as an artist...except he is an artist and at least one of his books became a big movie for Nick Cage...

...but I admit it all just leaves me a bit cold.  I guess I just don't have any of that stuff in me or my paintings...though as I've already said I love Paul Jenkins -they used his studio as the set for the actor/artist in the movie and I like to see it working and the machines he invented to move his canvases round were really cool I thought...


I like painting partially because it keeps me humble, honest, -and calm...

I don't like wacky, over-energized, dumb and grubby, stupid and/or silly...I just want to make paintings of things I see everyday,  things I feel or see and don't understand.

 I don't really believe in pictorial art or abstract art or any movement or idea for one...I am just making these things and I wonder about them...Will they be happy?  Will you future people appreciate them?  -Will they bring something to you that we could both recognize?

And in that cold empty future when all of us alive now will be no longer, will you say thank you doug?  You've brought me a piece of the past and I like it -It will shine in my eye.