Poetic Medium Archives - TheAppWhisperer

Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 7 July 2019

07/07/201907/07/2019 by Joanne Carter

“I told you I was ill‘, my favourite black comedy quote, written by Spike Milligan, engraved into gravestone. For many, health anxiety is a compartment of life – a dark cell – usually totally separate from their day-to-day self. Of course, there’s a lot to be anxious about in the world today and this phenomena shows no sigh of shrinking. Psychoanalyst Michael Currie notes that we rarely deal with the causes of anxiety – job insecurity for example, or social isolation – when trying to treat it. Writing in The Monthly, he says: “Anxiety-as-disease is treated much like an infection, as if the symptoms were a bacterium that should be eradicated.” The novelist William Boyd identifies the human condition as walking a tightrope between happiness and unhappiness. As glib as it sounds, I have always appreciated most of all the state of happiness, and never more so than when with my family and friends. And I was lucky enough to feel its power this morning at 4.20 am when my eighteen year old son returned home from a weeks holiday in Cyprus with friends, he came in and hugged me really hard, having missed me, I could feel the strength of his body, as I felt so small enveloped into him. Sigh, the sleepless week was worth it…(I tell myself). Anxiety can be crippling and next week when I am forced to stop and lay down on a hospital bed for day surgery, I will be thinking of this fabulous showcase that I have had the privilege to create with your art. The greatest stress buster, in my opinion, is art and each one of these artists knows that only too well. Enjoy!

Thank you to all the talented artists for submitting your works to our showcase this week. If you would like your work to be considered for entry in to our weekly Mobile Photography and Art Flickr Group, please submit it to our dedicated group, here. You can also submit images to our Instagram tag for this section #mobilephotographyandimagery.

Lydia Cassatt, Elaine Taylor, Mieke Elzinga @elzingamieke, Laura Peisch @isnob, Deb Field, Raul Barrios – @raulbar, @raveninnyc – Lori, @before.1st.light – Jane Schultz, Lou Ann Donahue – @Imgdonahue, @klmitt – M. Cecilia Sao Thiago, @elizabadoiu – Eliza Badoiu, Jun Yamaguchi, Andy Alexandre, Eloi Batista Fotografo, Giancarlo Beltrame, Jeremy Cassell, Lorenka Campos, Joseph Cyr, Linda Hollier, Tomaso Belloni, Fleur Schim, Gianluca Ricoveri, Susan Rennie, Deborah McMillion, Poetic Medium, Catherine Caddigan, Hanni K, Judy Wahlberg, p.a. hamel, Nick Kenrick, Paul Yan, Ian Clarke, David DeNagel.

Music this week is ‘We are One’ ©DizzyX

Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 23 June 2019

23/06/2019 by Joanne Carter

This weeks thrilling and thoughtful Mobile Photography and Art showcase projects a sense of artists maintaining their fidelity to the human race, whilst all around many are losing faith, it is at the heart of everything. Each work of art chosen here has a stake in our world. There are counterweights and balances as joy emerges in the work here. This storytelling is far more alive to the possibility of hope, of relationships, uncomplicated love and connections, each representing the intimacy of the long years of support that our community brings to one another. Enjoy.

Anca Balaj, Candice Ransom – @accidental_artist3, Deborah Field, p.a. hamel, Oola Cristina, Fleur Schim, jilllian2 – Jill Lian, Gianluca Ricoveri, Tomaso Belloni, Marina Sergeevna, Kerry Mitchell, Sergiy Beliayev, Jun Yamaguchi, Laila, Deborah McMillion, Karen Axelrad, Poetic Medium, Jeremy Cassell, Beate, Juta Jazz, Enio Godoy, ArrrRT eDUarD, Paul Yan, irene Oleksiuk, Lorenka Campos, Susan Rennie, Susan Maxwell Schmidt, Clint Cline, Judy Wahlberg, @ange_ombre – Ro Lannes, @raulbar – Raul Barrios, Lydia Cassatt, @one.fine.eye.phone – Kate Zari Roberts, @raveninnyc – Lori, Clarisse Debout, @mariatbellotti – Mariateresa Bellotti, Sarah Bichachi,

Music this week is ‘China Moon’ (instrumental) – Angels of Venice

Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 2 June 2019

03/06/201902/06/2019 by Joanne Carter

As humans, we have the unique ability of utilising our skill of habit, to our own disadvantage. We can fail to take note of what is always around us. Thus, we suffer emotionally because we lose sight of the value of what we have and then yearn for imagined attractions elsewhere. We live on auto pilot. As an example, if you think back, to when first learning to ride a bicycle, we become hyper aware of everything, as we sit on the saddle and place one foot on a pedal and the other on the ground, to steady us. As we try to push off and bring up the other foot to its pedal, we are acutely conscious of everything that is going on, we’re highly alert to sound, light, movement, balance and speed. But, after years of practice, we then jump on a bicycle and it’s possible to ride and ride without thinking consciously about changing gears, balancing, breaking or indicating. Our actions become a part of subconsciousness. And it is this autopilot being that can become our misfortune because, we begin to hardly register the important things. So instead of editing out the lesser things, enabling us to concentrate on the road, which is crucial in my example, we end up editing out elements of the world that have so much to offer us. But it is art that can bring us back to a more accurate assessment of what is valuable by working against our habit of autopilot and inviting us to recalibrate what we admire or love. This is called, Appreciation. When an artist creates an image, of an everyday item, objects that we encounter on a daily basis, when we view this image of those same items in a gallery, or look at them in a photograph, our attention is arrested and directed, we start to pay more attention to their shape, design, colour, we see them, as if for the first time. And despite this modest example, in time, we learn to look with kinder and more alert eyes at the world around us. One of the powers of Art is that it enables us to reawaken and value the merit of lives we live.

You’ll see plenty of examples in this weeks Mobile Photography and Art Showcase, as each artists utilises art as a re-sensitisation tool and helps us recover our own sensitivity by finding new ways to view the old. Enjoy!

Poetic Medium, Sheldon Serkin, before.1st.light – Jane Schultz, Gianluca Ricoveri, Clare Pickett, Ian Clarke, Catherine Caddigan, Oola Cristina, Jun Yamaguchi, Enoi Godoy, Eduardo Mueses, Lorenka Campos, Laila, Deborah McMillion, Jeremy Cassell, Jormain Cady, Song Hui, Anastasia Potekhina, Clint Cline, Rita Colantonio, jillian2 – Jill Lian, TheiPhoneArtGirl – Meri Walker, Damian De Souza, Kathy Clay, Judy Wahlberg, Susan Rennie, Michael Hamments, Kate Zari Roberts, Filiz Ak, Amy Ecenbarger, M. Cecilia Sao Thiago, Becky Menzies, Carol Wiebe, Peter Wilkin.

Music this week is ‘A Love Song’ by Xenia Dunford

Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 19 May 2019

19/05/201919/05/2019 by Joanne Carter

“Few travelled in these days, for, thanks to the advance of science, the earth was exactly alike all over. Rapid intercourse, from which the previous civilization had hoped so much, had ended by defeating itself. What was the good of going to Peking when it was just like Shrewsbury? Why return to Shrewsbury when it would all be like Peking? Men seldom moved their bodies; all unrest was concentrated in the soul.” ―E.M. Forster, The Machine Stops and the first book that I immediately reread thrice, when I was thirteen. It was the first book that interrupted my thought processes enough to relieve me of outside pressures. It was transient, like a mediation. Today, several new books have been released along an albeit more modern but similar vein. I am thinking of Frankisstein by Jeanette Winterson, author of Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. As well as Ian McEwan’s ‘Machines Like Me’ new release, set in 1982. This counterfactual novel sees Argentinian end the war abruptly with the Falklands becoming Las Malvinas. McEwan introduces an £86k male robot designed by Alan Turing, who in this book, has not been hounded to death for his homosexuality but instead, lauded for his technological breakthroughs. Of course it’s speculative fiction but the complexity is as disturbing as it is intelligent.

During an interview with Lisa Allardice for The Guardian, in a smart London restaurant last week, Winterson concedes, (in response to the Allardice’s statement that creating this novel (Frankisstein) would have taken her down some unlikely digital paths).“I did worry about that. Watching guys have sex with bots, female sex dolls start at around $2,000 for a really crap one”, she said, and it was no surprise to learn that they are “entirely fantasy. They’ve got huge tits and small waists and long legs, but of course what they haven’t got, and never will have, is a clitoris. They don’t have to worry about that!”

It’s interesting to me how the current crop of writing that is very much in vogue is AI based, much like mobile photography and art. Both arts mirror the trends. While the Machine Stops, represented a sci fi fantasy and immense treasured escape from my living reality, now at 50, Winterson and McEwan, along with the AI of smartphone visualisation represent, our new reality, and are the forces driving the process. Today, this mutual cultural presence is the next revolution, it is not just present within photography, it is reaching all arts. In 2015 Taylor Davidson, for Time magazine, described the camera of the future as an app, “a software rather than a device that compiles data from multiple sensors. The smartphone’s microphone, gyroscope, accelerometer, thermometer and other sensors all contribute data as needed by whatever app calls on it and combines it with the visual data”. Stephen Mayes, went on to contribute “and still that’s not the limit on what is already bundled with our digital imagery. Our instruments are connected to satellites that contribute GPS data while connecting us to the Internet that links our data to all the publicly available information of Wikipedia, Google and countless other resources that know where we are, who was there before us and the associated economic, social and political activity”.

This is the life we now live, we need to ensure we flesh out, some of the moral dilemmas within the drama of everyday life and remember what makes us human. We need no one to write us an algorithm for how to treat others and how to live well, although some humans, may be all the better for it.

Poetic Medium, Jun Yamaguchi, David DeNagel, Caren Drysdale, Deborah McMillion, Art Noonan, Lydia Cassatt, Laila, Karen Axelrad, Eduardo Llerandi, jilllian2 – Jill Lian, Chris Montcalmo, Vladislav Niko, Paul Toussaint, Nick Kenrick, Rita Colantonio, Vadim Demjianov, Allyson Marie, before.1st.light – Jane Schultz, borsbschulz2009, Kat McClelland, Susan Detroy, Amo Passicos, Kerry Mitchell, Will Reyes, Susan Rennie, Gianluca Ricoveri, Kate Zari Roberts, Debara Splendorio, Ralf Mauvog, Peter Wilkin, Rob Pearson-Wright, Clint Cline, TheiPhoneArtGirl – Meri Walker, Rita Colantonio, Catherine Caddigan, p.a.hamel, Jormain Cady.

Music this week is ‘As the Mist Clears’©Salt of the Sound

Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 12 May 2019

13/05/201912/05/2019 by Joanne Carter

My daughter’s school prom this week manifested into the creation of a taut, magnificently controlled week, with smidgen’s, in my case, of personal survival. The entire week was one of lucid reflection as the period of her school days came to an end with an almost surrealist picture of her leavers celebration. The limpid clarity as an observer and witness to the life changes as she transgresses can only be compared to Claude Cahun’s photomontages, it looks like life, but it’s not life, exactly. Only art can achieve this degree of realism.

I end this week, with a juddering heart, strangely close to tears, knowing that the true emotional nature of this week, gloriously ramps up next week, as her exams commence…

Take heart, view this weeks mobile photography and art lancing showcase, as more and more mobile photographers and artists find us, we are privileged to share their work.

Louise Whiting, Pascale G, Debbie Sutherland, G Billion, Poetic Medium, Kat McClelland, Jun Yamaguchi, Deborah McMillion, Clint Cline, Paul Yan, Arko Rayhan, Prodromos, Vako Darispanashvili, Laila, Peter Wilkin, klimtt – cecilia Sao Thiago, woltarise, Rita Colantonio, Andreas Komodromos, Clare Pickett, Ian Horne, Vadim Demjianov, Tomaso Belloni, Kerry Mitchell, Montse Abad, Kristin, Nick Kenrick, Amo Passicos, Eduardo Llerandi, before.1st.light – Jane Schultz, Catherine Caddigan, Linda Hollier, Lorenka Campos, Barbara Braman, Sarah Kuhn, Judy Wahlberg, Lake MacIntosh, Anthony Madigan, p.a. hamel, TheiPhoneArtGirl – Meri Walker, Charlaleeo, Robin Robertis, Tuba Korhan, Karen Axelrad.

Music this week is ‘You’re own kind of Beautiful’ by Alih-Jey Depena

Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 5 May 2019

05/05/201905/05/2019 by Joanne Carter

“Whenever the world throws rose petals at you, which thrill and seduce the ego, beware” Anne Lamott. I was told a similar thing, not quite so poetically, when I was promoted and became the technical editor of a print camera magazine, many years ago… it’s long gone. “Many congratulations Joanne, but keep those feet on the ground“, cautioned the main editor of the title. Sound advice, but doesn’t it get a little boring sometimes? For years now, I’ve noticed that I have become more and more sensible and it’s getting frustrating. I’m organised, at least in my mind, it might not show physically in my office. I keep my children’s diaries, as well as my own ticking over, day by day. I attend fabulous five star art events, around the world, I attend school meetings with senior teachers, I view the most breathtaking art – on a daily basis, I share my life with the richest most eloquent artists I’ve ever had the good fortune to befriend, I read and respond to specialist medical reports, I attend countless hospital appointments and physical examinations monthly and each time, return home, to remain forever sensible and organised. Even my car, is so understated that it only occurred to me recently, why it was that every single time I look into my rear view mirror on the motorway, that there seems to be a horizontal row of traffic a good 100 yards behind me, the reason being, the British public appear to believe this is an undercover police car and I’m about to turn on my hidden blue lights to anyone who overtakes me. It’s actually quite useful, I can get to destinations much quicker and my car remains untouched when unattended (unusual for around here).

To desire is as good as to possess and I think, I’ll just keep being judicious a little longer, at least until I can fully reveal what I’m working on, after that, I can assure you, my feet won’t touch the ground, yours won’t either and the only blue lights we’ll see, will be the ones at the celebratory party!

Oola Cristina, Chris Feichtner, Paul Yan, Jun Yamaguchi, Clint Cline, Lydia Cassatt, Robin Robertis, Allyson Marie, Karen Axelrad, Catherine Caddigan, Jennifer Bracewell, borisbschulz, Poetic Medium, jilllian2 – Jill Lian, Yasuo Furue, Tracey Grumbach, Rita Colantonio, Kristie Michele Art – Kristie Benoit, Joseph Cyr, Kat McClelland, Lawrence Lazare, Damian De Souza, before.1st.light – Jane Schultz, Susan Blase, jon jon, Kate Zari Roberts, Susan Rennie, Judy Wahlberg, Rob Pearson-Wright, TheiPhoneArtGirl – Meri Walker, p.a. hamel, Michael Brunsfeld, Lorenka Campos, Candice Railton, Gianluca Ricoveri.

Music this week is ‘Anchor’ ©Stephanie Schneiderman

Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 21 April 2019

22/04/201921/04/2019 by Joanne Carter

Earlier this year, I attended the press view of ‘A Fortnight Of Tears’ by and with Tracey Emin, at The White Cube Gallery, London. What has interested me, particularly, since the exhibition are the wide ranging and diverse reviews and critiques of this show. Having spent time speaking with Emin, as well as sharing the exhibition and space with her, I felt closer to this artwork and to her psyche than I ever have before. Many of the reviews were critical, she is an artist who has always attracted harsh critics. Her most infamous work “My Bed” (1988), is in many ways, metaphorically, part of this exhibition. It’s re-inacted as fifty huge iPhone selfie images displayed on the gallery walls, taken as she awakes in bed, displaying plastic surgery scars, moods and various nightgown changes. In an interview, she describes to Griselda Murray Brown, Financial Times, how this exhibition relates, “the Bed for me, is the closest thing that I have to [these] works because I stained that bed, I cried in that bed, I shit in that bed, I fucked in that bed, probably vomited in that bed. Everything that that bed is, is in [these] paintings”. Her theme of art has been the same for sometime, over 30 years, and consists mainly of abuse, abortion, love, loss, death, so not for the fainthearted but to define this recurring theme in one word, I would choose ‘life’. She has relentlessly been criticised for yelling about rape, this was before the #MeToo era and her response to that was “Of course I’m screaming about rape. Why shouldn’t I be?” frankly, I couldn’t agree more, don’t you? “I kept trying to say [this] to people years ago”, Emin continued. “Suddenly I’m allowed to express myself and to have the language and the voice that I’ve had for years and years. Now we’re in a time where we can put things right, and this is what my work is about”. Critics continue to urge her to ‘move on’ but much of the true grit of life, is incessant.

Another recurring critical aspect of Emin’s art and again it’s one that is repeated throughout the art world, is ‘is it art?’. I wonder why we are still asking this question.

In 1988, Richard Woodward wrote a feature article in the New York Times discussing recent photographic work, entitled “It’s Art, But Is It Photography?’. He went on to say “It isn’t clear anymore how photography should be valued or looked at, where within our museums it should be exhibited-even what is or is not a photograph”. In the late 1800’s debates literally raged about the status of photography, ‘is it art or not?’ critics hollered. Amusingly, (or not, depending on your sense of humour), in the 1920’s even Edward Weston accused pictorial photographers of making ‘pseudo paintings, instead of photographs’. Of course the debate has shifted full circle. Since the 1960’s , the question of whether photography is art became irrelevant with the acceptance of photography into museum collections. But the question once again shifted in the late 1980s to ‘Is it photography?’. It could be said that the prestigious Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York was not accepting of the depiction, not of art but of photography and in turm, what could be concluded, as photography. Prior to the 1990s MOMA had not given an exhibition to David Hockney, Robert Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman among others. It seems the theory being the work of these artists might have been art, but not photography.

This is an extract of a larger piece of writing that I am working on and it is relevant today in our era of mobile photography and art. We have made huge strides to encompass what we know is the most formidable and time changling art today but we still have further to travel. This weeks mobile photography and showcase, highlights once again the pioneering artists pushing the boundaries, challenging the status quo. Colour and wild creativity flourish, each visionary coherently embracing dreaming, while awake. Enjoy!

Music this week – ‘Ghost’ ©Jacob Lee

Gianluca Ricoveri, Rita Colantonio, Tuba, Kathy Clay, Fleur Schim, Kate Zari Roberts, Jun Yamaguchi, Candice Railton, Erik Beck, Nick Kenrick, Joseph Cyr, Poetic Medium, Erik Viggh, Susan Blase, jon jon, AleDi Gangi, borisbschulz2009, Catherine Caddigan, Mark Swanson, Johann Veers, Deborah McMillion, Ivan_sl, Francesco Sambati, Cristina Rossi, Clint Cline, Sherrianne100, TheiPhoneArtGirl – Meri Walker, Rob Pearson-Wright, Susan Rennie, Amo Passicos, klimtt – M. Cecilia Sao Thiago, 123ems, Lorenka Campos, Karen Axelrad, Ian Clarke, Tricia Dewey, Ioannis Sidiropoulos, Heather McAlister, Jane Schultz – before.1st.light, p.a.hamel.

Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 7 April 20019

07/04/201907/04/2019 by Joanne Carter

After scoring a hat trick, I am back! As some of you will have noticed, I was off last week. Not one to take life easy, I managed to cram it with, Mother’s Day, my 50th birthday and a serious lung infection. An accomplishment even by my own standards. The lung infection leading the way, I spent my days and continue to do so, (desperately trying to avoid another hospital admission), dosing up with antibiotics, sleeping sitting upright (it can be done, I’ve learnt, once complete exhaustion sets in) and reading a wide variety of books. I got it down to two books every two days, a record for me. This is all in sharp contrast to the preceding two weeks where I, at least felt like, flew around Amsterdam and swanned around Paris, with a scrum of journalists in close contact throughout, trying, initially politely, to avoid some persistent esoteric amorous advances. No doubt, the grounds I picked up the lung infection but that’s a little unjust; I feel quite hip these days, sharing a serious autoimmune disease with a raft of celebrities. ‘Lady AppWhisperer‘, has a bit of a ring to it, don’t you think? The main treatment for serious autoimmune diseases (for the uninitiated) are strong immunosuppressant drugs. These are delivered to my home address every two weeks, straight from a refrigerated van, handed to me in person and placed immediately into my own fridge (middle shelf, with nothing touching the contents, ‘not too close to the back, front or sides‘, my nurse voiced, as she inspected my placement). Then every two weeks, I inject myself, the fun part is I get to select the location, will it be my left or right thigh this week? Or perhaps and I’m still striving to gain confidence, will it by my abdomen, just along from my tummy button, hmm – the mental battle continues for that one. The result is that in order to reduce the immune system attacking itself, my immune system is reduced to next to nothing, therefore, any bugs floating around, once caught, take quite a bit of shifting and this lung infection is still lingering and I foresee, will continue in a similar vein for the next week or so. It’s proving to be the hardest secondary illness I’ve had, since original diagnosis to eliminate…

Speaking of books, one was bought for me this week by my eldest son, Jake, ‘Do No Harm’ by Henry Marsh. It’s a book by a neurosurgeon (Henry Marsh) of forty years and once picked up, hard to put down. Perfect when you’re confined to bed. Reading the accounts and surgeries of his poor patients, certainly helped to keep my own predicament in perspective. One quote from this book stays with me “Anxiety might be contagious, but confidence is also contagious” and of course, that’s what we strive so hard, to build here at TheAppWhisperer for the community of talented mobile photographers and artists that share their work with us. This weeks mobile photography & Art Showcase is a bumper one (I missed last week, see above), as it plays out, you’ll view, what is sure to be called, a ‘superbly original and exquisite spellbinding twenty first love story’, asserted by many of the major mobile photographers and artists operating in our world today. It’s pure poetry, mysterious and yet glittering, enjoy!

Rita Colantonio, Deborah McMillion, Kristie Benoit, aka Tman, Jon Arne Foss, Paul Toussaint, Lorenka Campos, Isabel Afonso, borisbschulz2009, Paul Yan, Tomaso Belloni, Candice Railton, Susan Maxwell Schmidt, Susan Detroy, Kat McClelland, Jun Yamaguchi, zeeyan, Eduardo Llerandi, Ian Clarke, zeeyan, Eduardo Llerandi, Ian Clarke, Linda Hollier, Clint Cline, Catherine Caddigan, Laila, Oola Cristina, Gianluca Ricoveri, Vako Darispanashvili, Kate Zari Roberts, Judy Wahlberg, Susan Blase, Michael Beresin, Hanni K, TheiPhoneArtGirl – Meri Walker, Montse Abad, Karen Axelrad, Yasuo Furue, Basak Aytek, Poetic Medium, Catherine Caddigan, M. Cecilia Sao Thiago, Susan Rennie, Tuba Korhan, Fleur Schim, before.1st.light – Jane Schultz, Paula Broom.

Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 3 March 2019

03/03/2019 by Joanne Carter

Enthralling, unexpected, beautifully assembled this weeks Mobile Photography & Art Showcase will please all; for it upholds our passionate belief in the continuities of mobile art. Nothing comes from nothing: In the truest sense, these works are a sign of the times, each one, committed realism. This is a showcase bursting at its seams with astute pieces exposing meaningful disruption. Enjoy!

Many congratulations to the following artists for being featured this week:

Oola Cristina, Scott Simpson, jon jon, Robin Robertis, Amo Passicos, Eduardo Llerandi, Deborah McMillion, Clare Pickett, Anastasia Potekhina, Jon Arne Foss, Y F, Karen Axelrad, TheiPhoneArtGirl – Meri Walker, Jun Yamaguchi, Enio Godoy, Rob Pearson-Wright, Debara Splendorio, Tricia Dewey, Lindy Ginn, before.1st.light – Jane Schultz, Gianluca Ricoveri, Clint Cline, Hanni K, Tracey Grumbach, Liliana Schwitter, Kate Zari Roberts, Susan Rennie, jilllian2 – Jill Lian, Barbara Nebel, Susan Maxwell Schmidt, Salwa Afef, Candice Railton, Victor Reynolds, p.a.hamel, Poetic Medium, Rita Colantinio.

Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 10 February 2019

10/02/201910/02/2019 by Joanne Carter

“The feelings of desperation and unhappinness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desperation and unhappinness stretch your whole sensibility”. A quote by Francis Bacon but one I’m inclined to disagree with. Rufus Wainwright once admitted that he was terrified to settle down into a happy relationship, because without the emotional drama that came from all those dysfunctional love affairs, he was afraid of losing access to ‘that dark lake of pain’ he felt was critical to his music. I disagree that we should all be addicted to suffering, we need to be able to trust pleasure and utilise it to help create art. Too many artists put their faith in anguish. To have faith in the suffering muse, can cause us to become tormented artists, or to fetishise suffering. To trust love to create art, is more valuable for our mental health. Love your work, love it like it loves you and let it love you. There’s a trust in that love, the fiercest trust of all and I have in spades for you. Huge congratulations to all the artists featured this week.

In keeping with my New Year Resolutions, you’ll find me at the press preview this week of Diane Arbus: In the beginning and Kader Attia: The Museum of Emotion at the Hayward Gallery, SE1. I’ll report back but am expecting it to be nothing short of fabulous. It’s open to the public from 13 February until 6 May.

Many congratulations to the following artists for being featured this week:

“The feelings of desperation and unhappinness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desperation and unhappinness stretch your whole sensibility”. A quote by Francis Bacon but one I’m inclined to disagree with. Rufus Wainwright once admitted that he was terrified to settle down into a happy relationship, because without the emotional drama that came from all those dysfunctional love affairs, he was afraid of losing access to ‘that dark lake of pain’ he felt was critical to his music. I disagree that we should all be addicted to suffering, we need to be able to trust pleasure and utilise it to help create art. Too many artists put their faith in anguish. To have faith in the suffering muse, can cause us to become tormented artists, or to fetishise suffering. To trust love to create art, is more valuable for our mental health. Love your work, love it like it loves you and let it love you. There’s a trust in that love, the fiercest trust of all and I have in spades for you. Huge congratulations to all the artists featured this week.

Many congratulations to the following artists for being featured this week:

Buzz Kills, Irene Irene Marchuk Oleksiuk, TheiPhoneArtGirl – Meri Walker, Robin Robertis, Tricia Dewey, Tuba Korhan , Clare Pickett, Robi Gallardo, Ransom Candice Railton, Hanni K, ArrrRT eDUarD, Jun Yamaguchi, Eduardo Llerandii, Rita Colantonio , Tomaso Belloni, Nashira1901, Cathrine Cathrine Halsør, Dieuwke Geervliet, Nelson Goncalves, Poetic Medium, Gianluca Ricoveri, Barbara Braman, Karen Axelrad, jilllian2 – Jill Lian, Amo Passicos, Matthew Teter, Kate Zari Roberts, Karen Axelrad, Susan Maxwell Schmidt, Laila, Luison – Lrh Arquitecto, Sherrianne100.