April Showers

We haven’t had such a crappy month of April in some time. But it kept me inside making these little images.

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i AM a GALLERY Feb. 2011

New work from David Halliday at i AM a Gallery. This covers the work he has done in February 2011

Stick people are smart

I was reading the New York Times about a discovery of ancient writing. And this thought passed through my ears. It may not be original. Except to me. What if writing began because of human deficiency? A lack of talent. If you wanted to leave someone a message that you’d seen a bear in the area and they should beware then you might scrach a picture of a bear on a wall, on the ground, etc. But what if you couldn’t draw well. You might resort to what most people resort to when they can’t draw. Stick people. When I was looking at the examples of ancient writing I was struck by how much they looked like stick people. And is this one of the keys to intelligence. When you aren’t capable of coming up with an answer to a question (lack of skill, intelligence, talent) you come up with an alternative. We are smart because we are stupid. (Sounds like something Yogi Berra would have said.)

Little Victor Genova and his sand castles

Just came back from my heart doctor. Young woman, tall, blonde, about 26 years old, beautiful, went in before me. She looked stressed. Came out the same way. Made an appointment for an MRI. And then rushed out the door. Into her life. All her schedules have been changed. All her assumptions have been changed. There is something about good health that makes us both arrogant and stupid. We forget. This is temporary. History is a shoreline on a sunny afternoon. Where the gentle waves roll in and wash away our sand castles.

Antwerp Railroad Station

Railroad stations are the cathedrals of the industrial revolution. This one in Antwerp has been freshened up. It is breath taking. (I like that expression. Sounds like one has almost been assassinated. By oneself.) Its a great building which feels like a huge vault. Where some cruel creature (history) has only recently departed.

The Singularly Directional Universe

The idea that the universe works in one direction, that it is breaking down, aging, is interesting. It treats the universe as a changing entity. As being alive. But consciousness is never explained in this process. Why do we open our eyes? (Not just us but all beings, even the lowly carrot.) Why do we reach out into the universe? What purpose does being alive serve? The usual response about God doesn’t answer the question. It just invites another question.

Recently I read about the Big Crunch, that the universe will one day reach a certain peak and it will be set into reverse, heading back toward the Big Crunch when we’ll all be crammed into an elevator about the size of the pin hole of the Big Bang. And in that trip we will pass back through time. Through history. And won’t that be fun. We’ll call it the Big Fun.

Sweet Lady Jane

I created this piece and the name Sweet Lady Jane popped into my head. For the Rolling Stone song My Sweet Lady Jane. And a girl I knew in college. She was blond and beautiful. With huge wonderfully white teeth. A very economic figure. Fun to be with. Smart. (She was going to become an accountant and was head toward her Masters in Business.) But she was short. Shortest girl I’ve ever been next too. About 5 feet. I felt like a paler shade of Wilt Chamberlain next to her. We were never romantically involved although I thought about it. But I could never get over the idea… she was going to become an accountant!

Pearls Before Swine

Pearls Before Swine. This is a group that I have always loved. Their Balaklava album  had a huge impression on me. I never saw them as a psychedelic drug group but one who managed to connect the desperation and despair of the 60s with the same sense of despair of the middle ages as shown in the paintings of Brueghel. Having lived in Belgium for several years I know the landscapes that he paints both real and allegorical.

Why did Hemingway…

Why did Hemingway blow his brains out? I read one writer who suggested that Hemingway had lost his ability to write. I think it is more that that. He had treated his memories, his brain as a farm. Filled with ideas, stories, characters. And then one day he woke to find that the soil had been sterilized. He had tried to harvest his mind and found that nothing was growing. He had a terrible hunger. That he could no longer feed.

Me and Salieri

One of the hardest things to overcome as an artist is the small minded resentfullness that rises in your throat at the success of a colleague. It is so painful because their success highlights one’s own failures. Sometimes one is fortunate. The bile evapourates when one sees/reads their work. The work itself gives one joy. To see an example of this, watch the movie Amadeus especially the scene with Salieri and the priest.