Ways of coping living in a tiny town where no one ever/rarely buys/looks at your paintings/drawings.

7. Hold a tea party (And I don’t mean like those fucktard right-wingers in the USA).
I bought a 5 piece tea set last week. 
It’s white and pink, with a gold, rim and the design features a man in a Georgian-style blue suit trying to woo a wig-wearing woman clad in pink.
Inside, on the bottom of the tea cup, he approaches her over a stone wall.
On the side plate, they stroll along a country road.
On the saucer, he’s managed to seat himself next to her on a bench.
Shame there’s no dinner plate.
I’d imagine by then he would have her blowing him. 

So the idea for the tea party is to invite a local person with something interesting that the other attendees wouldn’t know about/ would find interesting.

Aside from that, I made a little book.
I printed up sections of my drawings on back and front of A4, folded them all up, added a black cover, stuck a photo on that…and the photos above prove it. 
(It has more pages than this but tumblr won’t allow anymore at once) 

Today’s good thing was that my wife, who has been away for a week, came home last night.
Today she came in and sat with me in my studio for the afternoon and only looked at her iThing once in the whole time she was there.

Ways of coping living in a tiny town where no one ever/rarely buys/looks at your paintings/drawings.

6. Quality, not Quantity.
Well that’s my motto, anyway.
Friends, clothing, food.
But particularly in the production of art. 
Prolific whilst being particular. 

Today’s good thing was a chat with Bill and Janet from Banbury, who are probably the only people EVER to come into my studio and NOT say, ooooh, these must take you a long time to do.
'We usually go to Chipping Norton for Arts Weeks,' Janet said, but we missed it this year and came here instead, '
Bill particularly liked my Anti-Pope drawing.
I’m always slightly anxious about how it will be received, as it calls Benedict the Filth a plague-mongering, pedophile-protecting nazi boy (I have such a disliking for the Pope and all his nonsense, I made a little film about him)

'You like that, don't you?' said Janet to Bill while Bill was smiling and looking at The Pope.
'I think Richard Dawkins would like it too,' said Bill.
'Yeh,' I said, 'and probably Sam Harris and hopefully Christopher Hitchens.'
Then Janet asked for my card.
'Chris would like these,' she said to me and Bill, telling me Chris was their son.
'Well, I hope he does,' I said as they were going out the door.
'He will,' said Janet, 'oh, yes he will.'
And then, because I sincerely meant it, I said, ‘Pop in next time you’re in town. We usually have a sofa here and I’ll make you a cup of tea.

The Pope Print £50
70x100cm 
Fits a £20 70x100cm IKEA Ribba frame (looks good in the white one) 
Postage included 

Get in touch at lebusque(at)me.com if you want one 

There’s nothing I am expert at.
That’s why I don’t write posts that pass comment on politics or religion or the state of education or Dick Cleggerons education policy or budget cuts.

The only thing I really know anything about is my family, and that’s only because I’ve been in it for so long.
I know my place in the family tree, on what branch I sit.
I know WHO the individual members, and I know HOW they are in relation to me.
I have an opinion of them; I like or don’t like them.
I know what they do but I don’t pretend to know their minds.

I’m making this little book about them.

I’ve shrunk family photos down, laid them out on a 6x4 inch template and then printed them out at Boots.
I then cut them into 4cm squares and, with photo corners that I picked off an old photo album I found at a car boot sale, stuck them into the book I made today from paper I got at the 99p shop.

Ways of coping living in a tiny town where no one ever/rarely buys/looks at your paintings/drawings.

4. Drag strangers into the studio to show you how to do things that you don’t know how to do.
Today Daniel came in to show us all how to hand make books with our own hands.
It was such a pleasure to have some input from an outsider that we’ve decided to keep him and will be displaying him every Thursday as our artist in residence.
So if you want to see a live illustrator, come on Thursdays between 9 and 3 and have a look at him.

Today’s good thing was an email from my best friend telling me how to deal with thrush.
Just in case, I repeat here- 

"definately no alcohol
take acidophillus 10 billion ish is a good strength. no wiping from your back bottom to your frontno yeast bread or dairy
try that and lots of sleep can help. shower before bed, dirty girl.”

I ate 500gms of yoghurt, and had coffee for breakfast x 2, but no bread
The wiping bit; I generally follow the proscribed route.
And the alcohol? No chance.
I’ve seen the scans of my mother’s pancreas and liver.
That’s enough to put one off.

 

Rest of book.

Today the bad wolf dined.
He dined on the filthy language and vengeful intent with which I filled this drawing-swine and fuck and cunt and oink and fuck head directed at those I feel have slighted me.
That naughty wolf dined so well that hopefully he will be too fat to feast for a while.
He might be dining because, though it’s informative and entertaining, I’ve gone back to listening to On Point and it doesn’t have that good-vibe-change-the world-for-the-better feel that TED.com has.

However, I feel the bad wolf dines primarily because of the messy way things ended up in Australia around my mother’s recent death.
I’m trying to resolve my ‘issues’ by drawing them.
Fuck knows if it will work. 

Today’s good thing was a surprise visit from Amy Waters.
She has a studio here but doesn’t get in often because of her minimum wage paying job. 
Today she told me of her trip to Cornwall where she jumped of cliffs and lived in a caravan with 7 artists for a week. 
As she left her brain must have been muddled by the chlorine from the pool where she works and she called out ‘NICE’ instead of bye and we all laughed. 

————————

This drawing had the working title of ‘You, My Friend, Are a 4 Letter Word and it is Not LOVE’.
However, I’ve had a midstream name change and decided on ‘I Can Say Anything I Want Because It’s Art’.

70x100cm black ink on Fabriano

Today’s good thing was a visit from a nice man called Adam and his daughter, Sarah.
I had a good laugh with them and Adam liked what he referred to as my Weeping Otter t-shirt.
In fact he liked it so much he wants to bring back a tee shirt and have me draw a weeping otter on it for him.

The other good thing was a comment on my film, Gay School (by a user called doomedamerica) which went something like this-“FAG FILTH…AMERICA IS DOOMED..FAGS DOOM NATIONS,GENESIS 19”

PS- Here’s Gay School Part II.

Today’s good thing was meeting a very nice woman who it turns out is a psychotherapist.
I told her how much I liked therapy and that I wouldn’t mind having some more.
She told me my drawings were therapy.
'Yes,' I said, with flair, 'without the drawing I probably would have killed myself or…someone.'

As she was leaving she told me she liked to paint, just for the fun of it, without instruction.
'And why not?!' I told her.

 So, basically, I just had a visit with a therapist.

'Fear really sucks because what it means is you're really not focusing on what you're doing, you're focusing on the consequences of failing at what you're doing.'
I heard this today in this TED talk.

Today’s good thing so far was a lovely chat with a lovely person called Elizabeth.
She is part of the Standlake art Group.

After standing outside my studio for about 20 minutes telling her about the string of recent bereavements among my family and friends, I apologised to her.
'I'm sorry,' I said, 'I just completely spilled my guts to you,'
'Never mind,' she said back, 'that's what people do and I'm honoured you felt you could do it with me.'

Thank you, Elizabeth.