Introduction – Philip Blacker Journal
I am told that I should call this a blog but I prefer to call it a journal. It will just be anything that comes into my head and you never know, someone might read it. So off we go.
Welcome to my Journal
Wednesday 20th March 2024.
I am sitting in my workshop looking at my latest completed commission. It is a sculpture of a racehorse (I can’t say which one as I do not have the owner’s permission). I always have a rather flat feeling at this stage. This could apply to any of my work when it is finished. Buddha is quoted as saying it is better to travel well than to arrive, and I know exactly what the old boy meant. One gets so lost in the process and challenges one has to tackle that all external worries and thoughts disappear. Then you arrive at your destination and you remember you have to do your VAT returns.
In a week or so master moulder Lisa is arriving to mould the clay model, which is the first stage of the casting process.
I will explain more of this process at a later date, but in the meantime I have to create some new work for my six monthly exhibitions which Louise and I hold in our house in Oxfordshire. So far these have been a success but I have to keep producing some new stuff. This could include a new design for a silk scarf, a new piece of jewellery or even an oil painting. The decision making process involves me sitting around scratching my head for ideas, which can take anything from an hour to three weeks. Occasionally I detect a momentary glance of irritation crossing my wife’s face when I ask her, apropos of nothing, ‘do you think people would like a necklace in the shape of a boa constrictor? or something else equally nonsensical, (actually I am not sure the boa constrictor idea is such a bad one, it has a certain Gothic appeal).
However I think I feel a painting coming on.
But what subject?
The world is my lobster, as Buddha didn’t say.
I know, how about …………