I had just finished a few commission pieces and I wasn't feeling so great on one particular painting that sold- everything about this one painting seemed doomed from the get go and discussions around this one only ended up with me lying in its defense. I hate lying so I will say that I really believed it to be a good piece and possibly the start of the new direction I was leaning towards, though now it's a tad late since the moment of opportunity is gone and it was the anger from that one painting that started me off in this mess. Often for me I need a moment of pure hatred and rage in order to do something drastic in my work otherwise I find most of my work to follow the same patterns.

I remember I just locked myself in the office for three straight days with the easel by the futon so I could lie down and keep painting (I got my easel back cause we needed the folding chairs for something else). The end result was 3 new pieces all done up with progress made towards a huge canvas piece of Toronto- something that even shocks me since I have said time and time again that painting the sky line of Toronto makes my blood boil, I don't know why. Maybe because it is so cliché.

In between of painting, doctor's visits and the occasional short walk, things are not up to speed for the New Year. Scoot, my orange tabby, almost ran away as well- she got out on Christmas night and it took me a while to find her. I found her in a big ball shivering in the snow behind the house. Damn thing was so excited about being rescued she leapt out of my arms as I got the door open. My reaction to her recent breakout was to buy her some new fangled activity center that she can bother herself with- though lately she's been following me all over the apartment like I am Britney Spears and she's the paparazzi. She just camps out a few meters away from me and watches everything I do and doesn't care if I want to see her or not- she's bustin open the door to the bathroom when I am in the shower, she's jumping all over my bed when I am trying to sleep and eyes the back of my head when I try to ignore her when I am typing.

The toy itself is basically an elaborate quilt infused with feathers, burlap, crinkly noise paper, yarn and attached on one side via Velcro is a neon green dome with a tropical palm tree with two dangly coconuts. It's quite atrocious and thus fits nicely into my décor. I get the feeling she plays with it to appease me and constantly gives me insulting looks when I chatter "Let's play with your new crappy toy!"

Since I am at home all by myself in the day all I have now is Scoot and the painting. Daytime TV is disturbing and I honestly believe that anyone who is at home sick should NOT watch. Daytime TV only leads to vomiting, headaches and the sad realization this is your day.

The only other thing that is getting me hot under the collar is the constant reports of local graffiti reported in the news papers. One story in particular was the bombing of several antique train cars at the Railway Museum off Guelph Line. I am all for the need for freedom of expression but this act was heinous and downright ridiculous since the cars are stationary and go against the whole concept of bombing a rail car… unless you were planning on doing something so rude it would make the headlines in the local papers- helps if the museum hands out color images of the work in its entirety to help these kids feel powerful… oh they did? That's right. In all the local papers I saw the same story with photo and did the spit fly from my mouth as I yelled.

You can possibly guess what those words were.

First off- it is never a bright idea to hand out photos of vandalism to the papers. I will end argument here if this was an act of graft and call it vandalism simply because the museum is closed for the season and unless you are going into the museum you wouldn't see the cars. Someone did this job to get attention- like all acts of vandalism. The reason why it is not a great idea for photos of the entire mess to go in the papers is you are basically panning out to the egos of the vandals. This is what they want and now they have a clipping for the scrap book.

Second- Now that someone has taken such a bold move who is going to copy this behavior? I am all for the art form and I do the occasional piece (though that was way way way long ago and I always asked first and recently I just buy my own board and paint on that for shows and such) however, who is to say someone is eyeing this picture and gets a smart idea that its easy and thus a rampage of shitty tags go up in my neighborhood.

After watching Halton Hills council on the graffiti issue on TV I fell over laughing to what they were saying about the relationship of tagging and gangs. If you want to call three kids with spray cans and nothing better to do a gang then slap me. Well, three kids with spray cans and nothing better to do can be a gang but hardly anything remotely close to the gun totting city thugs going thru turf wars. So slap me. I doubt any of the tagging occurring in Halton Hills or Milton has any negative gang qualities since they don't stand out as warnings in my eyes. I have seen gang tags in the past and most of what I saw in the meeting were lame copy tags were some kid was trying to get it right… maybe for that big graft trade show in Montréal they have every spring. Though on drive-bys on the few hot spots I know of I always see kids hanging around so there is no shortage of bored kids sucking up the place.
I also find that tags and graffiti are hieroglyphics to people over 40. I can look at something and pull out the team name, the dedication and the form of the message and it looks like squiggle to my dad. Almost everyone I know who's over 40 has no idea what 4:20 means either… except this one guy who was ranting to a group of us during an interview I was conducting:

Over40guy: "I really hate the vandalism around here and it's getting worse."
AnnK: ""yeah. It's a pain."
Over40guy: "You know, I kept seeing this same 4:20 thing painted everywhere and I had no idea what it meant."
AnnK: "is that so?"
Over40guy: "Yeah- for weeks I kept thinking, what is 4:20? I even looked it up in the bible to see what passage it was but I couldn't find it."
AnnK: (trying not to burst out laughing) "Oh yeah?"
Over40guy: "Yeah- it wasn't until I asked a friend that I found out it was the time everyone smokes pot in Jamaica."
AnnK: "How did your friend know?"
Over40guy: "He looked it up online for me! So all these kids are in some sort of pot smoking Jamaican gang!"
/me slaps myself over and over until I die.

4:20 is so overrated. I should make 8:15 a new sensation as the official time to eat pie in Milton.